Another taboo subject

Lionel Shriver finished The New Republic in 1998. ‘At that time’, she writes in a foreword, ‘my sales record was poisonous’ and American publishers showed little interest in novels about terrorism. Both things changed: the next novel she wrote was the phenomenally successful We Need to Talk About Kevin, while ‘post-9/11, Americans became if anything too interested in terrorism.’ The New Republic stayed in a drawer, ‘because a book that treated this issue with a light touch would have been perceived as in poor taste.’

This explanation is not entirely convincing. Set in a fictional appendage to Portugal, The New Republic is a long way from The Satanic Verses, and it is difficult to see how it could upset the most sensitive post-9/11 reader (with the exception of ‘one small, irresistible’, but gratuitously offensive, addition to the epilogue). In any case, Shriver has embraced a reputation as a writer who takes on taboo subjects and creates unsympathetic characters.