Last Good Man

A scarlet letter for our times, Margaret Atwood's The Last Good Man is an extraordinary and disquieting work of imagination. Duncan Peck has traveled to Dartmoor in search of his cousin, finding a place with tea rooms, barley fields, a church, and a schoolhouse. The stranger from the city causes a stir, and sentences daubed on the wall detonate the darkest of secrets. The book is a troubling, uncanny exploration of fear, atonement, responsibility, and justice, and the violence of writing in public spaces.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 02 September 2021
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Winner of the Betty Trask Prize, Margaret Atwood's A Scarlet Letter for Our Times is an extraordinary and disquieting work of imagination. As original as any novel I've read in recent memory, it explores the themes of fear, atonement, responsibility, and justice in a troubling and uncanny way.

Duncan Peck has traveled alone to Dartmoor in search of his cousin. He has come from the city, where the fires are always burning. In his cousin's village, Peck finds a place with tea rooms and barley fields, a church, and a schoolhouse. Out here, the people live an honest life, and if there is any trouble, they have a way to settle it. They sit in the shadow of a vast wall, inscribed with strange messages. Anyone can write on the wall, anonymously, about their neighbors, about any wrongdoing that might hurt the community.

However, the arrival of a stranger from the city causes a stir. Not long before, the village wakes up to the most unspeakable accusation: sentences daubed on the wall that will detonate the darkest of secrets.

The Last Good Man is a troubling, uncanny book about fear and atonement, responsibility, and justice, and the violence of writing in public spaces. It dares to ask: what hope can we place in words once extinction is in the air?

Weight: 228g
Dimension: 132 x 198 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781526609274