We Are Now Beginning Our Descent - Tapa dura

The People's Act of Love is the best and most original book that I have read for years. -- Louis de Bernieres Spellbinding. -- Irvine Welsh Startlingly original. * * Mail on Sunday (The People's Act of Love) * * One of the best novels published for years. * * Independent (The People's Act of Love) * * Meek is excellent at evoking an Afghanistan of mulberry groves and old broken Soviet tanks, jagged mountains and craters where wedding parties once danced ... as an exploration of the effects of 9/11 on the Western psyche, it's fascinating. -- Anita Pati * * Time Out * * An unusual, challenging and memorable read. -- Andrew Ffrench * * Oxford Times * * This is a truthful and powerful novel. Does it come anywhere near the Greatest War Reporter Novel podium, whose only occupant, Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, has stood there without serious challenge for 70 years? I think it does. It might have got a little nearer to toppling that great cynic's romp if it weren't for the fact that this is at heart a novel about much more: it's about love, friendship and the struggle to be true in a world that has lost its grip on certainties. -- Alex Renton * * Statesman * * A hugely satisfying novel, cleverly constructed, one of the best I have read for some time. * * Revish * * Meek shares with Hitchcock a heightened understanding of the possibilities and limitations of his medium . . . And, like Hitchcock, he pairs this sophistication with a commitment to entertainment. -- Lorraine Adams * * Bookforum * * Meek exhibits such a knowing sense of humour . . . typically audacious. * * New Yorker * *

The message was short. 'I want to see you now. I want you to come to me, it doesn't matter how late it is, and tell me exactly what you want from me.' Like the world around him, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Adam Kellas's life is showing distinct signs of cracking apart. Against his better judgement, Kellas - divorced, unstable, spurned by his lover and by the world of letters - accepts a war assignment from his newspaper. It is the beginning of a journey which takes him from the mountains of Afghanistan to the elegant dinner tables of north London, the marshlands of the American South and, ultimately, to the darkest realms of the human imagination. Only the memory of the beautiful, elusive Astrid, a fellow reporter in Afghanistan, offers him the possibility of hope. With all the explosive drama of The People's Act of Love, James Meek's new novel spans continents and cultures. It is a timeless tale of folly and the pursuit of love, set against the incendiary politics of our time.