Jerusalem

by PatrickNeate (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.47

  In the first year of the 20th Century, a young Englishman returns home from the Boer War. Disillusioned with Empire and fearful for the soul of Albion, he sets out on a pilgrimage into the West Country, determined to identify the key elements of the English character that they may be forever preserved. In the present day, a young London entrepreneur, owner of the 'cultural consultancy' Authenticity (TM), defines his contemporaries through their consumer choices with bewildering accuracy, wallows in money and contemplates his growing sense of dissatisfaction. His father, meanwhile, a junior minister in a failing government, is sent to Africa to deal with the continent's latest tin pot despot. He is as confident of success as he is ambitious of what that success will mean for his career. Unfailingly relevant, politically astute, moving and funny, Jerusalem is a loving portrait of Englishness as it never was, isn't now and, hopefully, never will be.

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $11.27

  'He looks like a Brit, this guy. Full of good intentions and bad ideas.' Straddling two continents and two centuries, Patrick Neate's Jerusalem is a sweeping and hilarious epic of English misadventures abroad and at home. It features a self-serving MP lost and alone in an African dictatorship; a young, ultra-hip entrepreneur looking for something (or someone) new to exploit and an English veteran of a colonial war trying to save England from itself. With a host of other brilliant and brilliantly drawn characters, this is the funniest and most moving story of Englishness as it never was, isn't now and, hopefully, will never be.