Dreams of Leaving and Remaining: Fragments of a Nation

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In Dreams of Leaving and Remaining, award winning journalist Meek meets farmers and fishermen intent on exiting the EU despite the loss of protections they will incur. He reports on a Cadburys factory that s to be shut down and moved to Poland in the name of free market economics, exploring the impact on the local community left behind. He charts how the NHS is coping with the twin burdens of austerity and an ageing population. Through his journey he asks what we can recover from the debris of an old nation as we head towards new horizons, and what we must leave behind. There are no easy answers, and what he creates instead is a masterly portrait of an anxious, troubled nation. Instead, he demands that we reconsider the power of the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, a nations alienated from itself.

Reviews

Meek listens hard . His reportage . demonstrate[s] a sensibility and empathy that are his wont. * Financial Times *
Provocative and persuasive. * the Herald *
A beautiful collection by a renowned essayist. * Guardian *

Author Bio

James Meek is a Contributing Editor of the London Review of Books. He is the author of six novels, including The Peoples Act of Love, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Ondaatje Prize; We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, which won the 2008 Le Prince Maurice Prize; and The Heart Broke In, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Costa Prize. His previous non-fiction work, Private Island, won the 2016 Orwell Prize. In 2004 he was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year by the British Press Awards.