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'So enjoyable to read: the deft and humorous telling of people trying to muddle through modern life' The Times Peterdown, an industrial town with a noble past and a lacklustre present, has been chosen as the regional hub of Britain's first state-of-the-art bullet train network. High Speed+ promises the town a prosperous future but to make way for the new station, a local landmark will be have to be razed to the ground. On the shortlist are the Larkspur housing estate, a significant modernist masterpiece; and the Chapel, the beloved home of the town's football team. Local sports reporter Colin is as desperate to save the Chapel as his architect partner Ellie is determined to save the Larkspur, and they soon find themselves leading increasingly passionate and opposing campaigns. Out of this spins an epic, wide-angle novel, rich with character and incident. Affairs are embarked upon. Conspiracies are uncovered. A broad-based popular insurgency ignites.
Peterdown is a riotous novel that brings England's beleaguered streetscape to life and finds lurking there a playful and storied counterculture: mad monks and machine breakers, avant-gardists and non-conformists
'Peterdown is a state-of-the-nation work evincing a sweeping preoccupation with ideas of community, space and place . . . a timely book, clear in its concerns and vital in its focus' Literary Review 'A book from the psychic faultlines of 21st century Britain' Johny Pitts, author of Afropean'Entertaining, acute and remarkably prescient' TLS,
About the author
David Annand has worked as an editor at Condé Nast Traveller and GQ. He has written for the FT, TLS, Telegraph, Literary Review, the New Statesman and Time Out. His first novel, Peterdown, won the McKitterick Prize in 2022. He currently lives in Spain.
Summary
, WINNER OF THE McKITTERICK PRIZE 2022
'Madcap, hugely rich and entertaining' GQ
'Enjoyable, deft and humorous' The Times
'Entertaining, acute and remarkably prescient' TLS
'A book from the psychic fault-lines of 21st Century Britain . . . simultaneously down to earth and epic' Johny Pitts, author of Afropean
Peterdown, an industrial town with a noble past and a lacklustre present, has been chosen as the regional hub of Britain's first state-of-the-art bullet train network. High Speed+ promises the town a prosperous future but to make way for the new station, a local landmark will be have to be razed to the ground. On the shortlist are the Larkspur housing estate, a significant modernist masterpiece; and the Chapel, the beloved home of the town's football team. Local sports reporter Colin is as desperate to save the Chapel as his architect partner Ellie is determined to save the Larkspur, and they soon find themselves leading increasingly passionate and opposing campaigns. Out of this spins an epic, wide-angle novel, rich with character and incident. Affairs are embarked upon. Conspiracies are uncovered. A broad-based popular insurgency ignites.
Peterdown is a riotous novel that brings England's beleaguered streetscape to life and finds lurking there a playful and storied counterculture: mad monks and machine breakers, avant-gardists and non-conformists,
Foreword
An entertaining state-of-the-nation debut set in the north of England, full of warmth, comedy, character and anarchy.
Additional text
Annand's class politics are razor sharp; Peterdown is What a Carve Up! for the post-crash era of gentrification and Iconic developments, skewering many of the bromides of contemporary politics and culture along the way
