What foresight on the part of Faber & Faber to publish John Lanchester’s fifth novel, The Wall, in late January at the height of the partial shutdown of the United States’ Government over illegal immigration, refugee caravans and a border wall. Maybe Russian trolls aren’t to blame for the Trump presidency, maybe this has been a long game on the part of Faber’s marketing team. The conspiracy nuts on YouTube need to take a closer look.

The Wall is set sometime in the future. The Anthropocene – described by the characters as “The Change” – is in full effect, with thousands of people fleeing countries that are either underwater or devastated by drought. They are headed for places like England where the impact of climate change is not as apparent (though resources are scarce). The English Government has given these people the dehumanizing label “The Other” and, to stop them from entering the country, has constructed a massive edifice to span the border. Each citizen over a certain age is required, Game of Thrones style, to spend two years guarding the Wall, killing any “Other” who gets within spitting distance. Our very reluctant protagonist, Joseph Kavanagh, is about to start his tour of duty. He’s not looking forward to the freezing cold, or the tedium of standing guard for twelve hours straight, the only distraction the tea lady who does her rounds twice a day, or the likely possibility that he will be required to kill an “Other” as they attempt to breach the wall.

While the prose is engaging and I liked Joseph as a person once the ground-rules and the world-building are established the plot becomes predictable. There’s also some heavy foreshadowing that I’m sure is meant to increase tension but had the opposite effect on me. The novel’s strength, though, lies in Lanchester’s condemnation of the current generation, partly the Boomers, but also Gen X, who have allowed the far right to thrive on immigration issues and border control and whose apathy and scepticism toward climate change means that any politician willing to raise the issue is silenced, voted out, seen as part of a global conspiracy. Rather than go all didactic on the reader, Lanchester expresses this through Joseph, and those of his generation, who despise their parents, their selfishness, their unwillingness to act. Joseph particularly hates his parents because while they’re entirely to blame for the state of the planet, they don’t need to guard the wall, they don’t have to experience the freezing weather or watch a close friend murdered by a desperate refugee. It’s powerful stuff that almost, though not entirely, mitigates the linear, join the dots nature of the plot.