…an extraordinary autumnal depiction of a failed '60s radical. Imagine a former member of the Weather Underground, still in hiding, looking back on his macrobiotic salad days as a subversive, when the revolution, always the revolution, seemed around the corner, as close as a pop song blasting from a car radio. In assuming this persona (or the British equivalent of it, based on the so-called Angry Brigade), Kunzru, born in 1969, gives an amazingly convincing account of a period he never witnessed. And by treating the millenarian aspirations of his characters with respect, he rejects the popular view of such revolutionaries as delusional adolescents, playing at revolt. He reveals the yearning behind the dreadful agitprop, the abiding message inside the Molotov cocktail bottle. In doing so, Kunzru redeems a '60s sort of daring in the same way Tom Stoppard does in his recent play, "Rock 'n' Roll."
—The New York Times

In detailing Michael's story to its bitter yet affecting end, Kunzru is trying to document the history of a host of groups—from the Weather Underground in the United States to the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany to the Angry Brigade of Britain, the model for this book—and their step-by-step descent from peace-and-love idealism to base violence. Kunzru takes to this daunting task with such energy and specificity that the novel feels more like a bracing historical record than a work of fiction. Through it all, he walks a delicate line, trying to keep our sympathy for the members of Michael's underground organization even as it succumbs to the terrible logic of the bomb.
—The Washington Post

Simon Prebble, a consummate professional among narrators, plays Kunzru's middle-aged protagonist, who relates his adolescent-into-adulthood journey that has gradually brought him to his current state of misery. From the outset Prebble helps structure the kind of suspense and tension Kunzru created so superbly in The Impressionist. The story opens at Christopher's 50th birthday party. But he is no longer Christopher; "Michael Frame" now leads a yuppie suburban family life he describes meticulously and with witty, bitter irony. He exists in a sort of "mental crouch," waiting, knowing that "even now, in days, or even hours, my life here will be over." Initiated as a 1960s teen into a counterculture, anti-Vietnam, anti-imperialist commune, he falls for the gutsy, freewheeling Anna. Wanting to win her, he ends up blowing up bathrooms and buildings. But he is forever dogged by a creepy childhood acquaintance named Miles, who, in the end, blackmails him into working for the people he always bitterly opposed. Kunzru's descriptions of places and events are sometimes too long and Christopher's lifetime attachment to Anna is a bit hard to swallow. But Kunzru delivers a gripping tale. Simultaneous release with the Dutton hardcover. (Feb.)

It's the 1970s, and Chris Carver, briefly imprisoned for participating in a demonstration and increasingly disillusioned with the British revolutionaries with whom he's been involved since the 1960s, goes on the run, assuming the identity of one Michael Frame. Decades later, an ex-inmate of Chris tracks him down and pressures him to provide false evidence against another former comrade, now about to gain a powerful position in the British government. Unwilling to cooperate, Chris runs away again, this time to France, where he believes his old cohort, the supposedly dead Anna Addison, is hiding. As Kunzru (The Impressionist) shows how the present-day Michael's comfortable middle-class life has been interrupted, he reconstructs Chris's life story, focusing on his early interest in protests and his arrest while a student at the London School of Economics. With these simultaneous stories of Chris's early life and his evasion of his true identity, Kunzru creates a graphic and realistic portrait of the 1960s and beyond. Exciting, dramatic, and enthralling; recommended for all collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ9/1/07.]
—Jim Coan