FT Business Book of the Year

Best business books

All the books longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett

Union Atlantic

Union Atlantic sets itself the daunting challenge of doing for late capitalism what Heart of Darkness did for late colonialism. It is a measure of Haslett’s extraordinary skill that he just about succeeds. — Read the complete FT review

Synopsis

Doug Fanning lives an apparently gilded existence. A Gulf war veteran turned banker at the vast investment bank Union Atlantic, he is wealthy, handsome and powerful - the epitome of Wall Street success.

Charlotte Graves lives in self-imposed exile deep in the forests of rural Massachusetts, stubbornly refusing to engage with a country she feels to be in morally bankrupt. When Fanning decides to build himself a sprawling mansion adjacent to her home, her isolation is threatened and she determines to evict him from his land and, if she can, his kind from her country.

Union Atlantic is a deeply involving novel of the modern world - a world in crisis, where individual humanity is pitted against the global marketplace, and we must decide what, in the end, we value most highly.