I think I want to know more about James Meek. I loved - like many people - his wonderful Siberian thriller The People’s Act of Love, a book where all his storytelling powers were in full flight. It almost feels like Meek had to write that in order to approach in this book a topic much closer to home as it were - for his new novel seems clearly based on his career as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East in the years 2001-2. Descent‘s main character is 37-year-old Adam Kellas, a war reporter in Afghanistan, whose take on the conflict between Taliban and mujahadeen is cynical - his employers are only really interested in the American ascendancy (with photos and stories to match) - and whatever background stories Kellas might write are only a little light and shade. What he wants is out - in particular to return to writing fiction. But as his earlier attempts sold poorly, Kellas plans to follow the path of a good poet friend and become rich by writing a popular mass-market thriller. The events of 9/11 intercede however, robbing him of the essence of his plot line:

“it hadn’t occurred to Kellas that men might find it easier to sell their thrilling, unlikely narratives to the masses by asking armies of believers to perform them than to vend their imaginations at airport bookstalls in the accepted fashion”.

He changes tack and a year later has produced an arch satire - that will still appeal to the action-hungry American masses - even as it ridicules them and their government’s foreign policy. But even as he is on the verge of considerable success with a million-dollar book contract, there are complications - he’s causing havoc amongst his left-wing London friends, who he accuses of chardonnay socialism; and Astrid, an American journalist he met and fell in love with in Afghanistan a year before, urgently wants to see him again…This is intense stuff, with the personal very much the political, and a meditation too on the role and value of literature: is it just to entertain, or to transmit ideas? Descent to be sure gave me an idea of our world that fiction seldom ventures into…and makes me consider Meek surely one of the the most interesting of contemporary novelists.