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Red Pill
Hari Kunzru
The unnamed narrator of Hari Kunzru’s cerebral novel is an essayist struggling to write a book on the self in Romantic poetry. On a fellowship at a research institute in Berlin, the narrator binge-watches a violent police show. The book spins off into a twisted tale about Counter-Enlightenment philosophy, memories of Stasi-ruled East Germany, the alt-right, and the insidious hedging of racist and conspiratorial thinking, with flippancy and humour. Knowingly highbrow, Kunzru is a consummate storyteller and has composed one of this year’s coolest, but quietly menacing, novels.