Red Pill – Kunzru Hari (2021)

From the author of White Tears comes a state-of-the-world novel about one man's struggle to defend his values and create a reality free from the shadows of the past. A writer leaves his family in Brooklyn for a three-month residency at the Deuter Centre in Berlin, hoping for undisturbed days devoted to his art. When nothing goes according to plan, he shuts himself away in his room watching Blue Lives, a violent cop show with a bleak and merciless worldview. One night at a party he meets Anton, the charismatic creator of the show, and begins a conversation that leads him into the heart of moral darkness, threatening to destroy everything he holds most dear, including his own mind. Red Pill explores the alt-right, online culture, creativity, sanity and history. It tells the story of the 21st century through the prism of the centuries that came before, showing how the darkest chapters of the past haunt the present. Above all, it is a novel about love and how it can endure in a world where everything else seems to have lost its meaning. The novel has been praised by Aravind Adiga, Philip Pullman, The Spectator, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME Magazine and The Independent.