The action takes place in a series of foul workplaces, packed trains and bleak zone one Wetherspoon pubs. At his lowest, Paul is eager to work at Hove cemetery, “immediately excited by the possibilities of this – its rich nihilism, its ghoulish glamour, its echoes of Hamlet.” However, he eventually arrives at the realisation that he is trapped in his soul-destroying profession and must return, to the sales marketplace, and to the brutal London commute.

Szalay charts his life’s spiral downwards through menial work and questionable behaviour.

Offered the choice to join a rival firm, he jumps at the chance, only to realise he has been deceived and is out of a job. The first such figure was Paul Rainey, the brash protagonist of London and the South East (2008).Each morning, he is forced through a circle of hell: “for an hour he sits squashed against a wet window, someone else’s newspaper in his face, and a morsel of hashish under his tongue” Paul is a salesman and functioning alcoholic, commuting up from Brighton to Holborn to engage in the increasingly profitless business of selling advertising space in trade magazines - as he puts it “lying for a living … Trying to talk impatient strangers into doing what is not in their interests”. His series of subtle novels have proved himself skilled at capturing what he calls in his novel Spring “figures of metropolitan loneliness”. David Szalay's novel puts work firmly where, in the majority of people's lives, it belongs – slap-bang in the middle.” He has since broadened his scope considerably, from the workplace to the romantic entanglements and disappointments of white collar London, and to the inner lives of Stalin’s own henchmen. Having become the novelist-laureate of caustic workplaces and commutes with his acclaimed debut London and the South East, Canadian-born David Szalay has flourished into a versatile and admired contemporary author.Īs The Independent remarked of his debut, “To read most contemporary fiction, you'd think real life was something that went on outside of working hours.

All That Man Is by David Szalay