Dystopia In The Next Room

"Given the inauguration of the new president, The Mandibles can appear prescient. In the book, there is a wall between Mexico and the US, and Mexico does pay for it – though in my future the wall is to keep unemployed Americans (or Ameritrash) out. Yet in most of its detail, the book isn’t prophetic. Right now, the dollar isn’t plummeting in value; the currency is thriving. While the US national debt continues to rise, the feds are still pretending that they’ll pay the money back. The president in the novel may not be an economics whizz, but he’s not a reckless, unqualified jackass. Nevertheless, there may be a centre-not-holding atmosphere to my most recent novel – a disturbing sense that apparently just about anything could happen, and all bets are off."

Lionel Shriver on dystopia and The Mandibles