Oligarchy
Scarlett Thomas
Available as Paperback, eBook, Downloadable audio
Power, privilege and peer pressure – the hilarious new novel from the bestselling author of The End of Mr. Y
‘Hugely enjoyable’ Observer
‘Wickedly funny’ The Times
When Tash, daughter of a Russian oligarch, is sent to an English boarding school, she is new to the strange rituals of the girls there. Theirs is a world of strict pecking orders, eating disorders and Instagram angst.
While she spends her time at the lake and the stables, a few hand-picked girls are invited to join the Headmaster at his house for extra lessons. Then her friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, and the routines of her dormmates seem darker and more alien than ever before.
“Entertaining, irreverent and wrong-hilarious … Hugely enjoyable. It’s about as menacing as a cool girl’s black glitter nail polish – and just as much fun”
Bidisha
observer
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“Thomas’s humour has a sharp, rhythmic perfection. Her prose is fast-thinking, entertaining and punchy, her dialogue fully authentic … Intriguing, fluid and frequently funny”
new York Times Book Review
“Wickedly funny … Thomas has great fun with the familiar components of the boarding school yarn, even as she subverts them. Her writing is spikily humorous and controlled … This jet-black novel begs to be dramatised”
the Times
”Oligarchy is a delicious slap in the face; stunningly intelligent, alarmingly modern, hilariously funny, deeply pertinent, true, fantastical and several hankies’-worth of poignant”
Louisa Young
“Riotously funny … There are few more vivaciously original novelists around today, and surely none of them is having as much fun while making serious points … Quite brilliant … There have been many other notable novels about schools … but none so entertaining since Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”
spectator
Scarlett Thomas
Scarlett Thomas was born in London in 1972. Her novels include Bright Young Things, PopCo, Our Tragic Universe and The Seed Collectors. She is Professor of Creative Writing & Contemporary Fiction at the University of Kent.