The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City

Multigenre Welsh author Sinclair (London Overground) investigates London—his home and the almost exclusive focus of his work for half a century—and the extremes of capitalist development that have transformed it “to the point of obliteration.” In Sinclair’s estimation, London has become more similar to and intertwined with “other expanded conurbations” internationally, such as Berlin, Madrid, and Vancouver, than to England. Navigating his city and what he dubs “the strategic destruction of the local,” Sinclair compares Camden’s Munster Square, a seedy “nowhere” that he nonetheless praises for still being itself, with Hackney, whose recent gentrification into “riparian bohemianism” has displaced the area’s less prosperous residents and threatens to erase its rich history. As he crosses London, Sinclair explores the relationship between cycling and neoliberalism, contrasts the decay of a long-closed municipal swimming pool in yet-ungentrified Haggerston with the Zen luxury of the swim club on the 52nd floor of the Shard building, and watches in fascinated horror as the city’s richest residents burrow ever deeper into the ground in order to build subterranean personal gyms and cinemas. Mourning London’s alteration into a site in which “everything is pop-up, nothing is true,” Sinclair is nonetheless the liveliest of guides. If this is truly Sinclair’s final word on the city as he claims, he has saved the best for last. Photos. Agent: Laura Longrigg, MBA Literary Agents (U.K.). (Jan. 2018)