A striking collection of essays from the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Should We Stay or Should We Go, So Much for That, and The Post-Birthday World. Novelist, cultural observer, and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. A writer who embraces "under-expressed, unpopular or downright dangerous" points of view, she filets cherished shibboleths and the conformity of thought and attitude that has overtaken us. Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds for the likes of the Spectator, the Guardian, the New York Times, Harper's Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces, Abominations reveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal. Relentlessly skeptical, cutting, and contrarian, this collection showcases Shriver's piquant opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care, and taxes. In her characteristically frank manner, Shriver shrewdly skewers the concept of language "crimes," while chafing at arbitrary limitations on speech and literature that crimp artistic expression and threaten intellectual freedom. Each essay in Abominations reflects sentiments that have "brought hell and damnation down on my head," as she cheerfully explains, and have threatened her with "cancellation" more than once. Throughout, Shriver offers insights on her novels and explores the perks and pitfalls of becoming a successful artist. In revisiting old pieces and rejected essays, Shriver updates and expands her thinking. "Enlightened" progressive readers will find plenty to challenge here. But they may find, to their surprise, insights with which they agree. A timely synthesis of Shriver's expansive work, Abominations reveals this provocative, talented writer at her most assured.

Still unattached and childless at fifty-nine, world-renowned anthropologist Gray Kaiser is seemingly invincible--and untouchable. Returning to make a documentary at the site of her first great triumph in Kenya, she is accompanied by her faithful middle-aged assistant, Errol McEchern, who has loved her for years in silence. When sexy young graduate assistant Raphael Sarasola arrives on the scene, Gray is captivated and falls hopelessly in love--before an amazed and injured Errol's eyes. As he follows the progress of their affair with jealous fascination, Errol watches helplessly from the sidelines as a proud and fierce woman is reduced to miserable dependence through subtle, cruel, and calculating manipulation.

The first essay collection from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time. ‘This trenchant, unrepentant collection reminds you that she’s a brilliant writer… Order a copy in case she’s cancelled by Christmas’ THE TIMES (Book of the Year) ‘You may disagree with Lionel Shriver’s bracing journalism, but her right to spark disquiet goes to the heart of the freedom of expression issue’ Rachel Cooke, OBSERVER ‘Mutinous essays about modern politics and culture… An independent mind and a sense of humour are dangerous things to possess. The spiky, politically incorrect novelist Lionel Shriver has them in abundance’ THE TIMES ‘Testament to the fierce intelligence of a writer who wants us to think more, probe more, challenge more — and who also makes it fun’ THE SUNDAY TIMES Novelist, cultural observer and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. A writer who embraces ‘under-expressed, unpopular or downright dangerous’ points of view, she regularly deplores the conformity of thought and attitude that has overtaken society. Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays and op-eds for the likes of the Spectator and Guardian, speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces, Abominations reveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal. Relentlessly sceptical, cutting and contrarian but also frequently moving and vulnerable, this collection showcases her piquant opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care and taxes. Though some of the more divisive essays in Abominations have ‘brought hell and damnation down on my head,’ as she cheerfully explains, she also offers insights on her novels and explores the perks and pitfalls of becoming a successful artist. Readers will find plenty to challenge them here, but they may also find many nuanced and considered insights with which they agree.

Beautiful and charismatic, nineteen-year-old Checker Secretti is the most gifted and original drummer that the club-goers of Astoria, Queens, have ever heard. When he plays, conundrums seem to solve themselves, brilliant thoughts spring to mind, and couples fall in love. The members of his band, The Derailleurs, are passionately devoted to their guiding spirit, as are all who fall under Checker's spell. But when another drummer, Eaton Striker, hears the prodigy play, he is pulled inexorably into Checker's orbit by a powerful combination of envy and admiration. Soon The Derailleurs, too, are torn apart by latent jealousies that Eaton does his utmost to bring alive.

Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. When he leaves his lucrative law career for a foreign correspondent post in a Portuguese backwater with a homegrown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes Barrington Saddler, the disappeared reporter he's replacing, as the larger-than-life character he longs to emulate. Yet all is not as it appears. Os Soldados Ousados de Barba--"The Daring Soldiers of Barba" --have been blowing up the rest of the world for years in order to win independence for a province so dismal and backward that you couldn't give the rathole away. So why, with Barrington vanished, do incidents claimed by the "SOB" suddenly dry up? A droll, playful novel, The New Republic addresses terrorism with a deft, tongue-in- cheek touch while also pressing a more intimate question: What makes particular people so magnetic, while the rest of us inspire a shrug?

Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

When her father dies, Kay Wilkinson can’t cry. Over ten years, Alzheimer’s had steadily eroded this erudite man. Surely one’s own father passing should never come as such a relief?

Both healthy and vital medical professionals in their early fifties, Kay and her husband Cyril have seen too many of their elderly NHS patients in similar states of decay. Determined to die with dignity, Cyril makes a modest proposal: they should agree to commit suicide together once they’ve both turned eighty. When their deal is sealed in 1991, the spouses are blithely looking forward to another three decades together.

But then they turn eighty.

By turns hilarious and touching, playful and grave, Should We Stay or Should We Go portrays twelve parallel universes, each exploring a possible future for Kay and Cyril, from a purgatorial Cuckoo’s-Nest-style retirement home to the discovery of a cure for ageing, from cryogenic preservation to the unexpected pleasures of dementia.

Weaving in a host of contemporary issues – Brexit, mass migration, the coronavirus – Lionel Shriver has pulled off a rollicking page-turner in which we never have to mourn deceased characters, because they’ll be alive and kicking in the very next chapter.

Shep Knacker has long saved for "the Afterlife," an idyllic retreat in the Third World where his nest egg can last forever. Exasperated that his wife, Glynis, has concocted endless excuses why it's never the right time to go, Shep finally announces he's leaving for a Tanzanian island, with or without her. Yet Glynis has some news of her own: she's deathly ill. Shep numbly puts his dream aside, while his nest egg is steadily devastated by staggering bills that their health insurance only partially covers. Astonishingly, illness not only strains their marriage but saves it.

From acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Lionel Shriver comes a searing, ruthlessly honest novel. Brimming with unexpected tenderness and dry humor, it presses the question: How much is one life worth?

Tennis has been Willy Novinsky's one love ever since she first picked up a racquet at the age of four. A middle-ranked pro at twenty-three, she's met her match in Eric Oberdorf, a low-ranked, untested Princeton grad who also intends to make his mark on the international tennis circuit. Eric becomes Willy's first passion off the court, and eventually they marry. But while wedded life begins well, full-tilt competition soon puts a strain on their relationship--and an unexpected accident sends driven and gifted Willy sliding irrevocably toward resentment, tragedy, and despair.

From acclaimed author Lionel Shriver comes a brilliant and unflinching novel about the devastating cost of prizing achievement over love.

Set in a parallel yet all too familiar near past, a brilliant subversive novel from the New York Times bestselling author about a lifelong friendship threatened by the Culture Wars. In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence. Because everyone is equally smart, discrimination against purportedly dumb people is 'the last great civil rights fight.' Tests, grades, and employment qualifications are all discarded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word ("stupid") and encouraged to report parents who use it at home. A college English instructor, the constitutionally rebellious Pearson Converse rejected her restrictive Jehovah's Witness upbringing as a teenager, and so has an aversion to dogma of any kind. Made impotent in the university classroom, she's also enraged by the crushing of her exceptionally bright children's spirit in primary school. Fortunately, she enjoys the confidence of a best friend, a media commentator with whom she can speak frankly about her socially unacceptable contempt for the MP movement. Or at least she thinks she can . . . until one day the political chasm between the two women becomes uncrossable, and a lifelong relationship implodes. With echoes of Philip Roth's The Human Stain, told in Lionel Shriver's inimitable and iconoclastic voice, Mania is a sharp, acerbic, and ruthlessly funny book about the road to a delusional, self-destructive egalitarianism that our society is already on.

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2010 ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about motherhood. How much is her fault? In Lionel Shriver's hands this sensational, chilling and memorable story of a woman who raised a monster becomes a metaphor for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

Set in a parallel yet all too familiar near past, a brilliant subversive novel from the New York Times bestselling author about a lifelong friendship threatened by the Culture Wars. In an alternative 2011, the Mental Parity movement takes hold. Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence. Because everyone is equally smart, discrimination against purportedly dumb people is 'the last great civil rights fight.' Tests, grades, and employment qualifications are all discarded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word ("stupid") and encouraged to report parents who use it at home. A college English instructor, the constitutionally rebellious Pearson Converse rejected her restrictive Jehovah's Witness upbringing as a teenager, and so has an aversion to dogma of any kind. Made impotent in the university classroom, she's also enraged by the crushing of her exceptionally bright children's spirit in primary school. Fortunately, she enjoys the confidence of a best friend, a media commentator with whom she can speak frankly about her socially unacceptable contempt for the MP movement. Or at least she thinks she can . . . until one day the political chasm between the two women becomes uncrossable, and a lifelong relationship implodes. With echoes of Philip Roth's The Human Stain, told in Lionel Shriver's inimitable and iconoclastic voice, Mania is a sharp, acerbic, and ruthlessly funny book about the road to a delusional, self-destructive egalitarianism that our society is already on.

THE BRILLIANT NEW NOVEL FROM THE ORANGE PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. 'Distinctly chilling' Independent 'Unsettling as it is entertaining' Financial Times 'It's scaring the hell out of me' Tracy Chevalier In this eerily prophetic novel from the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, a once-wealthy family faces the prospect of ruin. This apocalypse is financial - the dollar is in meltdown, America's national debt far beyond repayment. It is 2029. The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune filtering down when their 97-year-old patriarch dies, but now their inheritance is turned to ash. Each family member must contend with disappointment, but also - as the effects of the downturn start to hit - the challenge of sheer survival. Recently affluent Avery is petulant that she can't buy olive oil, while her sister Florence is forced to absorb strays into her increasingly cramped household. As their father Carter fumes at having to care for his demented stepmother now that a nursing home is too expensive, his sister Nollie, an expat author, returns from abroad at 73 to a country that's unrecognizable. Perhaps only Florence's oddball teenage son Willing, an economics autodidact, can save this formerly august American family from the streets...

From the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin 'Enjoyably abrasive... a compelling read... sardonic and elegant' Evening Standard 'Scabrously funny... few authors can be as entertainingly problematic as Shriver' Guardian 'With laugh-out-loud and sad moments, it's a pinpoint-sharp novel' Woman and Home 'A satire on fitness zealotry with a side serving of culture-war intrigue... diverting' Financial Times 'Darkly funny... Shriver is so good at making wry observations about human behaviour and this is particularly witty on the dynamics between couples who have been together a long time' Good Housekeeping 'Shriver is an exuberant novelist, fertile in ideas, robust in argument and disdainful of economy... She writes bold and fearless comedy and delights in slaughtering the sacred cows of the stupid times we live in. Few novelists now raise a laugh. Shriver does so time and again' Allan Massie, The Scotsman 'Mischievous Lionel Shriver takes aim at the narcissistic modern cult of exercise. When Serenata's usually sedentary husband, Remington, takes up exercise and engages an attractive personal trainer called Bambi, the couple's lives are turned upside down.' The Times Best Books for Summer 2020 All her life Serenata has run, swum, and cycled - but now that she's hit 60, all that physical activity has destroyed her knees. And her previously sedentary husband Remington chooses this precise moment to discover exercise. As he joins the cult of fitness, her once-modest husband burgeons into an unbearable narcissist. When he announces his intention to compete in a legendarily gruelling triathlon, Serenata is sure he's going to end up injured or dead - but the stubbornness of an ageing man in Lycra is not to be underestimated. The story of an obsession, of a marriage, of a betrayal: The Motion Of The Body Through Space is Lionel Shriver at her hilarious, sharp-eyed, audacious best.

The first ever story collection from the inimitable Lionel Shriver 'Genius' Stylist 'Phenomenal' Observer 'Brilliant' The Times In her first ever story collection, Lionel Shriver illuminates one of the modern age's most enduring obsessions: property. A woman creates a deeply personal wedding present for her best friend; a thirty-something son refuses to leave home; a middle-aged man subjugated by service to his elderly father discovers that the last place you should finally assert yourself is airport security. This landmark publication explores the idea of "property" in both senses of the word: real estate, and stuff. Immensely readable, it showcases the biting insight that has made Lionel Shriver one of the most acclaimed authors of our time.

From the Orange Prize-winning author of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN comes a bold and savage story of the intersection of politics and human relationships, set in turbulent Northern Ireland. Having abandoned Philadelphia for the life of an international nomad, Estrin Lancaster has a taste for hot spots. She now finds herself in Belfast, a city scarred by twenty years of ritualised violence. As the former purveyor of his own bomb-disposal service, Farrell O'Phelan courts the company of destruction. Technically a Catholic, he shuns allegiance of any kind. For these two, normal life is anathema; love is a trap. What ensues is an affair between two loners who are beset with a fear of domesticity and a hunger for devastation.

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2010 ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about motherhood. How much is her fault? In Lionel Shriver's hands this sensational, chilling and memorable story of a woman who raised a monster becomes a metaphor for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry

Eva never really wanted to be a mother--and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

American children's book illustrator Irina McGovern enjoys a secure, settled life in London with her smart, loyal, disciplined partner, Lawrence--until the night she finds herself inexplicably drawn to kissing another man, a passionate, extravagant, top-ranked snooker player. Two competing alternate futures hinge on this single kiss, as Irina's decision--to surrender to temptation or to preserve her seemingly safe partnership with Lawrence--will have momentous consequences for her career, her friendships and familial relationships, and the texture of her daily life.

A scalpel sharp political satire from the Orange Prize winning writer of We Need to Talk about Kevin. 'A superbly witty political satire' THE TIMES Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. Leaving his lucrative career as a lawyer for the sexier world of journalism, he's thrilled to be offered the post of foreign correspondent in a Portuguese backwater with a home-grown terrorist movement. Barrington Saddler, the disappeared larger-than-life reporter he's been sent to replace, is exactly the outsize character Edgar longs to emulate. 'The Daring Soldiers of Barba' have been blowing up the rest of the world for years in order to win independence for Barba, a province so dismal, backward and windblown that you couldn't give the rat hole away. So why, with Barrington vanished, do the terrorist incidents suddenly dry up?

Following the success of We Need to Talk About Kevin this is a stunning examination of inheritance, literal and psychological: what we take from our parents, what we discard, and what we are stuck with, like it or not. After having escaped for years to London, Corlis McCrea returns to the grand Reconstruction mansion where she grew up in North Carolina, now willed to the three grown children following the death of their parents. All three want the house. Fiscal necessity dictates that two must buy a third out. Just as she was torn as a girl, the sister must choose between her decent younger brother and the renegade eldest-the black sheep who covets his legacy in order to destroy it. The adult siblings re-enact the deep enmities and loyalties of childhood, as each bids for a bigger slice of the pie.

Eleanor Merritt, a do-gooding American family-planning worker, was drawn to Kenya to improve the lot of the poor. Unnervingly, she finds herself falling in love with the beguiling Calvin Piper despite, or perhaps because of, his misanthropic theories about population control and the future of the human race. Surely, Calvin whispers seductively in Eleanor's ear, if the poor are a responsibility they are also an imposition.

Set against the vivid backdrop of shambolic modern-day Africa--a continent now primarily populated with wildlife of the two-legged sort--Lionel Shriver's "Game Control" is a wry, grimly comic tale of bad ideas and good intentions. With a deft, droll touch, Shriver highlights the hypocrisy of lofty intellectuals who would "save" humanity but who don't like people.