Hari Kunzru: Blue Ruin

Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him.

Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York.

When Jay arrives at a house set in an enormous acreage of woodland, he finds the last person he ever expected to see setting a reckoning decades in the making into motion.

Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind.

Hari Kunzru is the author of six previous novels, including Gods Without Men (2011), White Tears (2017) and Red Pill (2020).

His work has been translated into twenty-one languages, and his short stories and journalism have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, the Guardian, and The New Yorker.

He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Public Library, and the American Academy in Berlin.

Alex Peake-Tomkinson has been a book critic and journalist for 18 years. She currently writes for The Spectator, the Financial Times and the Times Literary Supplement, among others. Prior to this, she worked in book publishing.