Time of Lies
Page 26
Rosemary Lain-Priestley, author of Does My Soul Look Big In This? and Unwrapping The Sacred
“By focussing his farce on the business schools he knows so well, Board updates the campus novel and takes a big swing at the insincerities inherent in the ideology of neo-liberalism.”
CM Taylor, author of Premiership Psycho and Cloven
“This satirical novel is not just thought-provoking, it pokes your brain with a sharp pointed stick to get an explosive reaction. And the right reaction is laughter, constant chuckling coupled with a sheepish admission to self that MBAs are as full of bull as bureaucrats. Buy it, read it, then set a multiple answer exam on it. It’s a hoot.”
Peter Sullivan, former Group Editor-in-Chief of Independent Newspapers, South Africa
“Douglas Board has produced the next instalment of a great literary genre: the campus novel. Instead of following thwarted historians, faux-radical sociologists or cynical literary scholars, Board uncovers a cauldron of corporate claptrap, hubris and hard lessons which anyone who has been to business school will instantly recognize.”
Professor André Spicer, Cass Business School, London
And here’s a taster:
MONDAY 11 JUNE (EVENING)
London is being re-made. In 10 weeks the city’s mop-topped mayor, a one-man Beatles revival with added bleach, will wave the Olympic flag in Beijing’s stadium. Back home, the construction of a 21st-century stadium and velodrome has already begun. But the city’s re-making is much more than this.
The first re-making is up. Skyscrapers are sprouting on the city’s face like a fungus. Southwark Towers – 24 floors of offices next to the southeast rail terminus – is being demolished. In four years’ time the 87 floors of the Shard will take its place. If you’re going places in London, you’re going up.
Ben Stillman is going up. He’s barely 30 and he’s chief of staff to a billionaire.
The city is being remade back towards its centre. In places like Johannesburg, after the rich moved outwards they sent removal vans back in to take their jobs with them. But most of the jobs that matter in London are still in the centre, and the people with money have come back to hug those jobs more closely. In London, the centre is the place to be.
Where Ben’s at in his career could not be more central. He is the hub of 26,000 people labouring worldwide in everything from chemicals and agriculture to re-insurance. Ben is Alex Bakhtin’s right hand.
The third re-shaper of London is glass. All the new towers are glass from top to bottom. Welcome to a new kind of power, which sees all and displays all. It has no need to hide. Perhaps this power is modern and clean, democratic and accountable. But then a gust blows, a cable slips and a window cleaner’s fingers get caught in the winching gear. As detergent and blood smear the glass, we glimpse something older. The cable that once suspended a human halfway between heaven and earth was the divine right of kings.
All-glass palaces: London’s new way to tell passers-by that they count for shit. You’re welcome to look in, because you’re so lowly that what you see has no consequence.