John Lanchester’s Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay is the unbelievable true story of the economic crisis.
We are, to use a technical economic term, screwed. The cowboy capitalists had a party with everyone’s money and now we’re all paying for it. What went wrong? And will we learn our lesson – or just carry on as before, like celebrating surviving a heart attack with a packet of Rothmans?
John Lanchester travels with a cast of characters – including reckless banksters, snoozing regulators, complacent politicians, predatory lenders, credit-drunk spendthrifts, and innocent bystanders to understand deeply and genuinely what is happening and why we feel the way we do.
‘Devastatingly funny … the route map to the crazed world of contemporary finance we have all been waiting for’
Will Self
‘Bang on the money’
Independent
‘Explains the crisis in a way that actually sticks … to my amazement, I finally grasp it’
Janice Turner, The Times
‘Endlessly witty … will turn any reader into an expert within the space of 200 pages’
Jonathan Coe
‘Terrific … there is no better guide to the crazy world of high finance’
GQ
John Lanchester is a journalist, novelist and winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award. His fiction includes Mr Philips, The Debt to Pleasure and Capital. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New Yorker, with a monthly column in Esquire.