The Facility, January 2011 Book of the Month, is written in a more conventional style and imagines a dystopian near-future where the totalitarian governement is using counter-terrorism laws to allow the police to make people 'disappear'. When Arthur Priestly is taken, his estranged wife Julia approaches Tom Clarke, a journalist at an online campagning newspaper to help her find him. They discover that the government is imprisoning people believed to have a new and potent disease.
Lelic creates a real sense of place and deftly maintains the pace of the thriller plot as the security forces latch on to Tom and Julia. His exploration of how the rights of the minority are violated for 'the greater good' is written with sharp and exceptional prose. This novel is challenging but well worth the read.
You can find our more about Simon Lelic on his website http://www.simonlelic.com/
About Simon Lelic
I was born in Brighton in 1976 and, after a decade or so living in London and trying to convince myself that the tube was fine, really, because it gave me a chance to read, my wife and I recently moved back to Brighton with our two young boys. That Barnaby and Joseph’s grandparents happened to live close enough by to be able to offer their babysitting services was, of course, entirely coincidental.
As well as writing, I run an import/export business. My hobbies (when I have time for them) include reading (for which I make time, because I can just about get away with claiming this is also work), golf, tennis, snowboarding and karate. My weekends belong to my family (or so my wife reminds me), as does my heart.
I studied history at the University of Exeter. After graduating I was qualified, I discovered . . . to do an MA. After that I figured I had better learn something useful, so took a post-grad course in journalism. I know, I know: so much for learning something useful. After working freelance and then in business-to-business publishing, I now write novels. Not useful either, necessarily, but fun and, in its own way, important.
My Five Favourite Books
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Not exactly an original pick, I realise, and some would dispute its literary merits. On the other hand, it has proved almost Shakespearean in its impact on the English psyche – and certainly on mine.
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Technically, philosophically, this is probably not McCarthy’s best book. But it is my favourite. Devastatingly simple, yet dazzling in so many ways. The book I wish I had written.
As If, Blake Morrison
A recent entrant into my ever-changing top five but a book I could read again and again –were it not so intensely heartbreaking. Although actually, that hasn’t stopped me, and nor should it any parent, son, daughter.
The Paris Review Interviews, volumes I-IV, Philip Gourevitch (ed.)
I’m cheating, I realise, by picking four books as one. Not literature these but collectively an indispensable insight into the minds of those who forge it. A regular source of inspiration, consolation and distraction.
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
What can I say that has not been said before? Just stunning.
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