The British author knows all about self-deception.
His new novel is the warning we desperately need.
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Instead, Lanchester contemplated a bejeweled golden reading pointer.
Do you watchGame of Thrones?
It has been compared to the HBO series, owing to some obvious parallels.
More salient, though, is the echo of Anglo-Saxon obsessions in our own existential alarm.
The novel is also about the justifiable rage of young people toward their elders.
So, too, did England, with the likes of George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh.
Something else sets Lanchester apart from crossover literary personalities of yore.
(He has a deep sympathy for climate-change deniers.)
What must we believe to make it cope with the world?
Questions that, perhaps unsurprisingly, spring directly from his own life.
John Henry Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962.
He was an only child.
His mother, born Julia Gunnigan, grew up on a farm in County Mayo, Ireland.
Just before their wedding, he died abruptly.
This second man disappeared.
Only close to the end of it would she let him in on the central secret of her existence.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Bill had always wanted a large family.
Julie was already 40 and assumed that she wouldnt be able to provide one.
But she lied to Bill, telling him she was only 31.
She used her younger sister Dillys papers to get a fraudulent British passport.
Nine years had to disappear.
The Lanchester family referred to her deflections as the Enquiry Suppression Field.
There was an understanding that large swaths of her life were simply not to be discussed.
It was only after Johns mother died in 1998 that he spoke to his aunt Peggie.
With his mothers conflicting passport and birth certificate in hand, he unraveled the truth.
There are many things one could say about how all of this relates to John Lanchester.
But it also demonstrates how we are all reticent to know the less pleasant truths of our lives.
Lanchester worked through this deceit with both therapy and the partial shield of research and book writing.
His mothers deceptions took a significant toll on Lanchesters mental health.
Characters with secrets or double lives populate Lanchesters fiction.
In Lanchesters second novel,Mr.
Individual, often self-deceiving humans interact believably, fatefully, with tumultuous sociopolitical forces.
But writing about gloomy political events and looming existential threats requires a particular form of self-preservation.
I think the reason for that is actually that its very difficult to think directly about climate change.
The novel is all the stuff I couldnt bear to think about.
But this is a testament to the ways in which Lanchester looks and doesnt look.
Decades after emerging from the Enquiry Suppression Field, Lanchester still seems to process his emotions only glancingly.
People dont really recognize me, he said.
Maybe once or twice after Im on the telly a lot.
At lunch after our library visit, Lanchester was feeling a bit tippy.
He has a problem with his middle ear, and his balance gets worse in the cold.
I want it not to be true.
The alternative is paralyzing.
Maybe Trump and Bolsonaro are the last ones.
At some point, humankind wont be able to deceive itself about climate change any longer.
In a moment of particular terror, Hifa asks Joseph to tell her a story.
Joseph is at a loss:
I tried to think of one.
Few want to hear the likely and calamitous truths of our rapidly approaching future.
Thats how you change peoples sensibilities.
Because I think, obviously, the numbers in the data are hugely important and hugely consequential.
He added: Im not sure how many minds they change.
*An earlier reference to the journal N+1 has been deleted because Lanchester disputes the accuracy of the quote.
