The Last Thing He Wanted - Softcover

‘The centrality of The Last Thing He Wanted is not a person, nor even an event, but the tone of the US in 1984. The technique of writing is, as usual, unique, an incantation with repetitions and rhythms to entrance the reader, meant to restore full weight to a language made weightless by misuse... I should perhaps also mention that I read it twice for pure delight before reading it for review.’
Veronica Horwell, Guardian.

‘Fast-paced, witty, inventive... The Last Thing He Wanted is a creation of high seriousness, a thriller composed with all the resources of a unique gift for imaginative literature.’
Elizabeth Hardwick, New York Review of Books

‘An impressive, fast-talking, hard-boiled, wise-cracking, tough-guy of a novel.’
Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday

The first novel in over a decade from perhaps the most admired writer in America.

It is 1984. Journalist Elena McMahon, watching her evasive, gruff father’s life ebbing away before her, clutches at understanding him to grasp little more than air. But harder, keener forces impel her to do his bidding, to go naked into a ‘situation’ in Central America, ‘because things were hotting up again’...

A literary masterpiece.