Drayton and Mackenzie

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'Will have you hooked ... an ode to the enduring power of male friendship' - The Times Best Summer Books

For the first time since university, James and Roland's paths through life - one drawn in straight lines, the other squiggled and meandering - began to cross...

James Drayton has always found things too easy. By the time he leaves university, he's still searching for a challenge worthy of his ambitions, one that will fulfil the destiny he thinks awaits him.

Roland Mackenzie, on the other hand, is an impulsive risk-taker, a charismatic drifter with boundless enthusiasm but a knack for derailing his own attempts to get started in life.

When a chance encounter in a pub reunites these old acquaintances, it sets them on an unpredictable course through the upheavals of the 21st century, and triggers an unlikely alliance. Against the backdrop of the financial crash and its aftermath, they strive to create something that outlasts them, something that will matter.

Drayton and Mackenzie is a stunningly ambitious, immediately engaging and ultimately deeply moving novel both about trying to make your mark on the world, and about how a friendship might be the most important thing in life.

Reviews

'A romp through the 21st century via two bright young people - but beyond all the money and success Drayton and Mackenzie is really about friendship' - Laura Hackett, Sunday Times
'A big, bustling novel about love, friendship, money, ambition and the 21st century, packed with humour and intelligent observations ... picture Great Expectations meets The Big Short ... I finished it tear-stained ... An epic tale of ambition and male friendship' - Sunday Times
'Will have you hooked ... an ode to the enduring power of male friendship' - The Times Best Summer Books

Author Bio

Alexander Starritt was born in Scotland in 1985. His debut novel The Beast was a 2017 Spectator book of the year; his second novel, We Germans, was published in 2020 and translated into six languages. It was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in the United States, and nominated for the Prix Femina, Prix Medicis and Prix du Meilleur Livre tranger in France. Starritt has also translated from German, including Stefan Zweig's A Chess Story, and a selection of Kafka's short stories, The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man.