Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, and my guest this week is the writer A.M. Holmes, whose new book is The Unfolding, which is a novel that starts with the election of Obama, but that seems to have an

awful lot to say to the present moment. AM, what was the sort of genesis of this book? Because

it does feel quite contemporary, but it started a while ago and became prophetic, if you like,

didn't it? Yeah. I think, you know, quite a while ago, I was thinking a lot about, obviously, history,

American history and our sort of political evolution. And I was talking to my editor about

what I was going to write next. And I said, you know, I feel like there's something happening

where the political establishment has lost track of the American voter and there's all this dark money flowing into politics.

And then Cambridge Analytica is happening and all of this stuff.

And the editor actually said to me, but you don't write science fiction.

I said, I know, but I just have this weird, weird feeling about things.

And I sort of was bummed out by the editor's initial response.

And then after Trump got elected, they called me back and were like, how's that book coming

along?

I was like, well, you know, it's happening.

But the premise for it, for those who of the readers who haven't heard, it's not giving

too much way, is its protagonist,

the big guy,

is a sort of very,

I guess you'd say,

traditional sort of,

you know,

...