Your Life Without Me
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Your Life Without Me
The Orwell Prize-winning author is back with a powerful, modern novel about the nature of loss and change
An explosive modern novel from the award-winning writer of The People's Act of Love.
Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police.
He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul's cathedral - and a man once intimately connected with the Burman family. Have the police laid a trap?
Compelling and compassionate, this novel follows Mr Burman's journey towards the mystery of a radical act and into the true nature of his own family. It asks what a person leaves behind when they've gone, and how much of the past we can carry with us into the future.
A novel with telling things to say about consumer culture, architecture, marriage, radicalism and the mistakes parents make . . . The novel is also a potent tale about the unknowability of people and what loved ones leave behind when they are gone. - Independent, Novel of the Month
Engrossing and compassionate . . . Meek's fine novel is itself a provocation; tragic, humbling and rejuvenating all at once. - Financial Times
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781837262625
Publisher: Canongate Books
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 12 February 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Canongate Books
Edition: Export/Airside - Export/Airside/Ireland
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 19.0mm
Width: 141.0mm
Height: 220.0mm
Weight: 266g
Pages: 256
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About the Author
James Meek is the author of seven novels including The People's Act of Love which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won both the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Scottish Arts Council Award. It has been published in more than thirty countries. Meek has also written two collections of short stories and two books of non-fiction, including Private Island which won the 2015 Orwell Prize. In 2020, To Calais, In Ordinary Time was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. He is a Contributing Editor to the London Review of Books and writes regularly for the Guardian and New York Times. He lives in London.
@meekajam | @jamesmeek.bsky.social
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