“Nothing Before the Sea Was Real”: The Dying World of John Lanchester’s The Wall

Abstract

This essay argues that John Lanchester’s novel The Wall can provide empathetic intelligibility to what might otherwise be an inscrutable future by analyzing crucial aspects of its dying world that resist the exhausted literary conventions found in much post-apocalyptic climate fiction. These conventions are transformed in The Wall to emphasize shared humanity, queer futurity, greater inclusivity, and an uncertain, circuitous climate-changed ending. The Wall’s vivid literary experiences can help shape readers’ perceptions toward imagining more ethical presents and alternative futures, making an abstraction like ‘climate emergency’ imaginable, knowable, and actionable