The Rhyl Poster

Benjamin Stanton embodies both the promise and the peril of the twenty-first century. A brilliant legal theorist working behind the scenes at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, his interpretations, drafts, and opinions as good as make the laws that shape the lives of millions.

At a conference in the Swiss Alps, Stanton encounters the enigmatic Pirotti, who introduces him to the small blue pills that soothe the pain of a Gulf War wound that still troubles him. Soon, addicted to these petits bleus, he starts experiencing visions of sublime nerve-rays conjoining all humanity in a great web of righteous, divine benevolence. He also finds himself passing out Court documents to Pirotti and his associates. Entrusted by the Court with the drafting of a landmark ruling, Stanton instead turns to preparing a sprawling, revelatory document that will destroy the world that he and his colleagues have labored to build, the better to bring into view the new law, the new dispensation that the era so desperately craves.

An ultramodern parable, in which the tormented descendants of Dostoyevsky and Conrad are cast adrift in the game space of Grand Theft Auto, The Rhyl Poster is a book about the incalculable substance of the self, the burden of historical and individual guilt, and the elusive, but very real, dream of justice. Tom McCarthy's new novel is a work of high style, unsettling lyricism, and brilliant invention.