Caledonian Road

by Andrew O’Hagan

McClelland & Stewart

Caledonian Road

by Andrew O’Hagan

McClelland & Stewart

Synopsis

A biting portrait of British class, politics, and money told through five interconnected families and their rising—and declining—fortunes.

Campbell Flynn, art historian, professor, and fêted fixture of the literati, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public—yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much.

He’s never taken other people half as seriously as they take themselves, which is the first of his mistakes. The second is a new project: opportunistic and precisely calibrated to rake in a fortune. Riding on the high of a best-selling biography of Vermeer and fielding more inquiries and requests than he has the time to pursue, Campbell has nevertheless still not managed to shake the question of money. The fact of his quiet loan from an old friend now embroiled in scandal makes the ever-present worry feel even more pressing. His unflappable agent, Atticus; his steadfast wife, Elizabeth; his sister, Moira, crusading parliamentarian for the poor; his well-off, self-absorbed adult children, Angus and Kenzie; and all the outward trappings of success can’t conceal that something in his life is off.

As Campbell becomes increasingly entangled with a brilliant student, convention-smashing and working class, like he used to be, he feels he’s been given a second chance to embrace the changes in society that frighten him, even as he sees trouble brewing for his family and friends. Campbell’s personal quest takes him down darker roads than he could have imagined, and all his worlds—the art scene and academia, fashion and the English aristocracy, journalism and the inter-net—collide in spectacular fashion, culminating in one shocking night on Caledonian Road.

This book may also be available at the TIFA Festival Bookstore.

About the Author

Andrew O’Hagan, a Scottish novelist and essayist, is a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, a three-time nominee for the Booker Prize, the editor-at-large of the London Review of Books, and a contributor to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He lives in London. Andrew O’Hagan’s Festival appearance is generously supported by Scottish Books International and The Scottish Government in Canada.

Read more about Andrew O'Hagan

Photo credit: Christina Jansen.

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