The Missing

In a brilliant merging of reportage, social history and memoir, Andrew O'Hagan clears a devastating path from the bygone Glasgow of the 1970s to the grim secrets of Gloucester in the mid 1990s. One of the most original, moving and beautifully written non-fiction works of recent years, The Missing marked the acclaimed debut of one of Britain's most astute and important writers. 'He is a writer who looks myths and lazy thoughts and images clear in the face and scrubs them down to what he elegantly calls 'truthful inelegance'. From the 'boiling contradictions' of his childhood this young writer has made a triumph in words.' Candia McWilliam, Independent on Sunday 'Andrew O'Hagan's The Missing, part autobiography, part old-fashioned pavement-pounding, marks the most auspicious debut by a British writer for some time.' Gordon Burn, Independent 'His synthesis of memoir and the meta-genre we have made of serial killing reverberates powerfully. This is a story of an undeclared war of social anomie, in which we all have the potential for victimhood. A timely corrective to the idea that nothing profound can be said about now.' Will Self, Observer, Books of the Year 'O'Hagan is an attractive guide on his pilgrimage of the missed and unmissed . . . His vision of modern Britain has the quality of a poetic myth, with himself as Bunyan's questing Christian and the missing as Dantesque souls in limbo.' Blake Morrison, Guardian