Ian McEwan is publishing a new satirical novel about Brexit later this month. In The Cockroach, “Jim Sams wakes and finds he must endure a worse fate” than Kafka’s Gregor Samsa: Instead of a beetle, Sams “has become the British prime minister.” “As the nation tears itself apart, constitutional norms are set aside, parliament is closed down so that the government cannot be challenged at a crucial time and ministers lie about it shamelessly in the old Soviet style, and when many Brexiters in high places seem to crave the economic catastrophe of a no deal and English nationalist extremists are attacking the police in Parliament Square, a writer is bound to ask what he or she can do,” McEwan told The Guardian. There’s only one answer: write.” The book will be published by Jonathan Cape on September 27.
At Longreads, Jess Row talks to Morgan Jerkins about race, power, and his new book, White Flights.
Time has dedicated an entire issue of the magazine to climate change. “Human nature, like journalism, is deadline-oriented,” editor in chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal explained. “Our intent with this issue—only the fifth time in our history that we have turned over every page of a regular issue, front to back, to a single topic—is to send a clear message: we need to act fast, and we can.”
Imani Perry talks to the New York Times By the Book column about her favorite authors and playwrights.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble is being adapted into a limited series. “I can’t believe how lucky I am to get to work with these producers and with this studio,” Brodesser-Akner told Deadline about the project, which is being developed by ABC Signature Studios. “I wrote a novel thinking it was just a little story that I had to get out into the world, and never allowed myself to think that the story would continue on like this.”