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Your Life Without Me

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Your Life Without Me

By: James Meek
Narrated by: Chris Nayak
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£5.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST. Cancel monthly.

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An explosive modern novel from the award-winning writer of The People's Act of Love

Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police.

He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul's cathedral - and a man once intimately connected with the Burman family. Have the police laid a trap?

Compelling and compassionate, this novel follows Mr Burman's journey towards the mystery of a radical act and into the true nature of his own family. It asks what a person leaves behind when they've gone, and how much of the past we can carry with us into the future.

 Genre Fiction Literary Fiction England
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Critic reviews

"James Meek is one of our most consistently brilliant and thought-provoking writers. This is his best novel yet - a dark and unsettling meditation on marriage, fatherhood and architecture. Every page rings with deep truth" (ALEX PRESTON)
"Unsettling and boasting a haunting twist, this is one of our great prose writers on guilt, complicity and forgiveness"
"James Meek is a master of the art of the stealthy narrative, and his keen intelligence and alertness are evident on every page of his new novel . . . Heart-breaking" (RUPERT THOMSON)
"Your Life Without Me follows a retired schoolteacher as he tries to discover whether it was his influence that landed a favourite former pupil in prison for a radical act of destruction . . . A novel that is a profound and unsettling take on modern life by a writer at the top of his game" (KIRSTY LANG)
"Engrossing and compassionate . . . Meek’s fine novel is itself a provocation; tragic, humbling and rejuvenating all at once"
"A novel with telling things to say about consumer culture, architecture, marriage, radicalism and the mistakes parents make . . . The novel is also a potent tale about the unknowability of people and what loved ones leave behind when they are gone." (MARTIN CHILTON)
"A complex narrative that seeks to peg an absorbing domestic psychodrama to hot-button talking points on the state of Britain . . . thoughtful and heartfelt, not least on the challenges of parenting adult children"
"Your Life Without Me is remarkable as it is about ordinary people in ordinary places (Mr Burman lives in an unspecified north) with extraordinary interiors. To end a novel with an almost ecstatic limbo and loneliness is quite an achievement . . . Meek threw out the rule book: what seemed like social commentary and family drama becomes a truly gothic interaction" (STUART KELLY)
"James Meek’s latest novel Your Life Without Me explores great contemporary themes of consumerism, terrorism, and the challenges of how to be your authentic self in a mediated, self-aware world. This suggests a mighty tome; instead, it’s a little gem. In tending to these themes through one family, the Burmans, these explorations are much more personal and all the more moving and resonant for it" (VIKKI REILLY)
"This novel about a retired teacher’s attempts to discover whether his influence landed a favourite former pupil in prison for trying to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral is Meek’s first for six years, and is being hailed as his best yet" (DAVID ROBINSON)
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