How to Make a Bomb: A Novel

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Description

If he suddenly found what surrounded him unbearable, it was because it was artificial
Everything had been designed and manufactured, and he was trapped in it

Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian, attends a conference in Bergen, Norway. On his return to London, and to his wife and son, something unexpected and inexplicable happens to him, and he is unable to settle back into his normal life.

Seeking answers, he flies to Cadiz to see Ins, a Spanish academic with whom he shared a connection at the conference, but his journey doesn't end there. A chance encounter with a wealthy, elderly couple sends him to a house on the south coast of Crete. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he claims he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that has become impossible to bear Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic
existence, or is he utterly self-deluded

As he tries to make sense of both his personal circumstances and the world surrounding him, he finds himself embarking on a course of action that will push him to the very brink of disaster.

Reviews

Riveting and enigmatic -- Jake Kerridge * The Telegraph *
An exceptional, frightening and curiously persuasive novel. I hope it brings Thomson the attention and reward that one our finest and most imaginative novelists clearly deserves. -- Miranda Seymour * Financial Times *
A magnetic portrait of one man's radicalisation ... the text sparkles with clarity and precision, and frequently beauty too a book that strikes to the core of our age of uncertainty. -- Lucy Scholes * The Telegraph *
Thomson is a skillful and deliberate writer ... How to Make a Bomb is, at one level, a satire of existentialism ... It is also a comic novel about radicalisation: a literary Four Lions for the age of the "incel" -- Caleb Klaces * The Guardian *
I devoured [this book] in a single sitting. The sense of dislocation and location made it seem like a dream of another life, all of it so lyrical and yet narratively acute. A wonderful achievement. * Jonathan Lethem *
Masterfully ambiguous [How to Make a Bomb raises] complicated questions but doesnt neatly wrap them up. Rather, it allows the ideological inquiries at the center of the book to linger and bloom for continued consideration [The book] provides a powerfully evocative catalyst for thought and feeling. -- Matt Bell * New York Times *
Thomson skillfully balances things on the brink of explosion, creating suspense worthy of a thriller in a work grounded in literary tradition ...This eloquent novel manages to give a new resonance to the big questions of our age, inviting us to look for answers within. -- Anna Aslanyan * The Spectator *
A riot and very compelling quite dark, as usual, but funny too Thomson is an extraordinary writer. -- Samantha Morton * Observer *
An utterly absorbing and elegantly written novel about the deepest of existential questions: how we should live. Rupert Thomson is truly one of our most brilliant and original writers * Graeme Macrae Burnet, author of Case Study and His Bloody Project *
An outstanding, compulsive work from a rare talent. Rupert Thomson continues to make my jaw drop with each book. * Irenosen Okojie *
Wonderful ... The intensity and specificity of the language is a revelation, so forensic it anchored me to every page. * Russell Celyn Jones *
A novel that turns a midlife crisis inside out, rewardingly...the result, in Thomson's expert hands, is fast-paced and headlong; the book ends up rewiring the reader's sense of what's banal and what's not. A work about estrangement and solitude that's surprisingly rapid, engaging, light-footed. * Kirkus Reviews *
PRAISE FOR RUPERT THOMSON: Each novel he writes is a new vision of a new world; he's the least predictable, the most surprising of writers. Philip Pullman; Hands down, Rupert Thomson is one of my favourite writers of all time. I impatiently wait for his new novels and he never disappoints. Andrea Wulf; When someone writes as well as Thomson does, it makes you wonder why other people bother. * New Statesman *

Author Bio

Rupert Thomson is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels, including The Insult, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and chosen by David Bowie as one of his 100 Must-Read Books of All Time, Death of a Murderer, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and The Book of Revelation, which was made into a feature film by the Australian writer/director, Ana Kokkinos. His memoir, This Partys Got to Stop, won the Writers Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year in 2010. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has contributed to the Financial Times, Guardian, London Review of Books, Granta, and Independent. He lives in London.