Your Life Without Me
- 12 Feb 2026
- 9781837262618
- £18.99
- 256 pp
- 141×220mm
- 12 Feb 2026
- 9781837262625
- £15.99
- 256 pp
- 141×220mm
- 12 Feb 2026
- 9781837262632
- £15.19
- 256 pp
- 12 Feb 2026
- 9781837262649
- £25
- 6 hrs 43 min
In a few words
The Orwell Prize-winning author is back with a powerful, modern novel about the nature of loss and change
In a few words
The Orwell Prize-winning author is back with a powerful, modern novel about the nature of loss and change
In a few words
The Orwell Prize-winning author is back with a powerful, modern novel about the nature of loss and change
In a few words
The Orwell Prize-winning author is back with a powerful, modern novel about the nature of loss and change
Chewy, stylish and absorbing . . . I was happily pulled along by the book’s marvellous intensity. It kept me reading, kept me thinking and kept me entertained
John Self
TimesA compelling, compassionate portrait of an English family in flux
James Meek is one of our most consistently brilliant and thought-provoking writers. This is his best novel yet - a dark and unsettling meditation on marriage, fatherhood and architecture. Every page rings with deep truth
Alex Preston
Unsettling and boasting a haunting twist, this is one of our great prose writers on guilt, complicity and forgiveness
James Meek is one of our most consistently brilliant and thought-provoking writers. This is his best novel yet - a dark and unsettling meditation on marriage, fatherhood and architecture. Every page rings with deep truth
Alex Preston
Unsettling and boasting a haunting twist, this is one of our great prose writers on guilt, complicity and forgiveness
James Meek is one of our most consistently brilliant and thought-provoking writers. This is his best novel yet - a dark and unsettling meditation on marriage, fatherhood and architecture. Every page rings with deep truth
Alex Preston
Unsettling and boasting a haunting twist, this is one of our great prose writers on guilt, complicity and forgiveness
More about
the book
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.
More about
the book
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.
More about
the book
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.
More about
the book
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.
Unsettling and boasting a haunting twist, this is one of our great prose writers on guilt, complicity and forgiveness
A beautifully elegant writer . . . This is a novel of ideas . . . big ideas about the conflict between progress and nostalgia [and] our relationship with the past
Stephanie Merritt
BBC Radio 4 Front RowA moving and original novel from a writer of real integrity
Such precise observations, along with well-chosen words that deliver a gentle comic twist . . . and lashes of irony . . . are a consistent source of pleasure
James Meek is a master of the art of the stealthy narrative, and his keen intelligence and alertness are evident on every page of his new novel . . . Heart-breaking
Rupert Thomson
Your Life Without Me follows a retired schoolteacher as he tries to discover whether it was his influence that landed a favourite former pupil in prison for a radical act of destruction . . . A novel that is a profound and unsettling take on modern life by a writer at the top of his game
Kirsty Lang
Engrossing and compassionate . . . Meek’s fine novel is itself a provocation; tragic, humbling and rejuvenating all at once
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.
Martin Chilton
IndependentJames Meek is a master of the art of the stealthy narrative, and his keen intelligence and alertness are evident on every page of his new novel . . . Heart-breaking
Rupert Thomson
Your Life Without Me follows a retired schoolteacher as he tries to discover whether it was his influence that landed a favourite former pupil in prison for a radical act of destruction . . . A novel that is a profound and unsettling take on modern life by a writer at the top of his game
Kirsty Lang
Engrossing and compassionate . . . Meek’s fine novel is itself a provocation; tragic, humbling and rejuvenating all at once
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.
Martin Chilton
IndependentJames Meek is a master of the art of the stealthy narrative, and his keen intelligence and alertness are evident on every page of his new novel . . . Heart-breaking
Rupert Thomson
Your Life Without Me follows a retired schoolteacher as he tries to discover whether it was his influence that landed a favourite former pupil in prison for a radical act of destruction . . . A novel that is a profound and unsettling take on modern life by a writer at the top of his game
Kirsty Lang
Engrossing and compassionate . . . Meek’s fine novel is itself a provocation; tragic, humbling and rejuvenating all at once
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.
Martin Chilton
Independent
James Meek
View profileJames 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
James Meek
View profileJames 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
James Meek
View profileJames 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
James Meek
View profileJames 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
