Universality: A novel
Serious and literary fiction, General fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Summary
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE 2025 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION • Publishers Weekly&’s Best Books of 2025 • NPR&’s Books We Love Remember—words are your weapons, they&’re your tools, your currency: a twisty, slippery… descent into the rhetoric of truth and power from a writer who &“brilliantly illuminates the entrenched inequalities of our time&” (The Guardian).Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, in the midst of an illegal rave, a young man is nearly bludgeoned to death with a solid gold bar.An ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement that has taken up residence on the farm. She solves the mystery, but her viral exposé raises more questions than it answers, namely: Who wrote it? Why? And how much of it is true? Through a voyeuristic lens, and with a simmering power, Universality focuses in on words: what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean.The thrilling new novel from one of the most acclaimed and incisive young novelists working today, Universality is a compelling, unsettling celebration of the spectacular, appalling force of language. It dares you to look away.