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Black Bag

By Luke Kennard
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Brief Description
In Luke Kennard's audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend's students react to someone zipped into an oversized bag, sitting at the back of... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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A stunning novel - 'A masterpiece' Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine - about the crisis of masculinity: funny, profound and moving.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

In Luke Kennard's audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend's students react to someone zipped into an oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences.

A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular, can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? Meanwhile, the actor's childhood friend and flatmate forms a vision for monetising this new situation...

A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781399826129

Publisher: John Murray Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 12 March 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: John Murray Publishers Ltd

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 135.0mm

Height: 216.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 400

Collections

Fiction General Fiction Humour Literary Fiction Luke Kennard The Booker Prize 2026

About the Author

Luke Kennard is an award-winning poet and novelist. His literary criticism has appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry London, and Times Literary Supplement. He lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.

In 2014 he was named one of the 'Next Generation Poets' by the Poetry Book Society in their once-per-decade list. Cain, was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and described by Alan Hollinghurst as 'the cleverest and funniest thing I've read this year'.

Notes on the Sonnets, an anarchic response to Shakespeare's sonnets, won the Forward prize for Best Poetry Collection in 2021.

His first novel, The Transition, was BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. His most recent novel is The Answer to Everything. His forthcoming poetry collection, The Book of Jonah, will be published by Picador in 2025.

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