Arkady - by Patrick Langley (Paperback)

About the Book

A portrait of modern urban living, Patrick Langley's debut Arkady is a brilliant coming-of-age novel as brimming with vitality as the city itself.

Book Synopsis

Brothers Jackson and Frank live on the margins of a big urban sprawl. From abandoned tower blocks to gleaming skyscrapers, their city is brutal, beautiful and divided. As anti-government protests erupt across the teeming metropolis, the brothers sail in search of the Red Citadel and its promise of a radical new way of life. A striking portrait of the precarity of modern urban living, and of the fierce bonds that grow between brothers, Patrick Langley's debut Arkady is a brilliant coming-of-age novel, as brimming with vitality as the city itself.

Review Quotes

'Arkady raises questions about what happens after capitalism finally collapses.... It's difficult not to think of JG Ballard throughout, but Langley's unforgiving urban scapes also recall the sound of dubstep pioneer Burial or early pirate-station grime. The prose crackles with energy as the narrative follows the constant movement by placing the reader on a well-oiled tracking dolly, often zooming out to remind us of the bigger picture. Langley is a highly visual writer and Arkady an assured allegorical debut about a near-future Britain that is potentially only a recession or two away.'
-- Ben Myers, New Statesman

'[A] timely evocation of social strife at a time of increasing political polarisation. The novel's preoccupation with the invisible socio-economic topography of the city ("maps of ownership, maps of property, maps of power") will resonate with anyone who has pondered the vexed question of gentrification and housing inequality.... Langley's bleak vision of a city effectively at war with its inhabitants - on behalf of the property moguls and financial speculators who own it - is a pointed extrapolation of the present state of things.'
-- The Irish Times

'A distinctly post-Brexit novel, Arkady is set in an unnamed city that both is and isn't London, thick with the atmosphere of the riots of 2011, and the stricken, devastated aura of the days after the Grenfell fire. It is oblique, and bleak: it is never quite clear what has happened or is happening, what is it about our world that has finally broken or overflowed.... But there is always a flutter of hope in the dark, and in Arkady it dwells in the unshakeable brotherly love between the novel's two heroes, Jackson and Frank [whose] relationship is so beautifully etched ... Arkady suggests that we'll build our own arcadias out of the dreams that haunt us, both threatening and protective.'
-- Lauren Elkin, The Guardian

'I haven't been able to stop thinking about [Arkady] - such a tender, hopeful tale of brotherhood and belonging, set against vividly imagined urban topographies. I haven't read anything like it in ages.'
-- Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure

'Thick with smoky atmosphere and beautifully controlled - this is a vivid and very fine debut.'
-- Kevin Barry, author of City of Bohane

About the Author

Patrick Langley is a writer who lives in London. He writes about art for frieze, Art Agenda, and other publications. He is a contributing editor at The White Review. Arkady is his first novel.