Shortlisted for the 2024 Wingate Prize

‘A sublime gift’ Meg Mason

A taut, ground-breaking new novel about a writer’s relationship with her larger-than-life mother – and about the very nature of writing.

Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book walks across London on a quiet Sunday. The city was a favourite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself recalling all that made her complicated mother extraordinary. Even though the woman, a writer, wants to respect her mother’s nearly pathological sense of privacy, she must decide whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.

‘Confirms McCracken as among the finest contemporary chroniclers of everyday life… wonderful’ – Guardian