I.O.U. - Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay (2010)

Where did the money go?

John Lanchester makes it plain: Leave the Wall Street greedheads unsupervised and they'll make themselves grotesquely wealthy while wrecking the edifice that made it possible.

Are bankers the new magicians, pulling gilt-edged rabbits out of empty hats? Or are they the new dentists, the most depressed of professionals because the public associates them with pain and suffering? John Lanchester suggests a combination of both, and he achieves it with an approach that ricochets between horror and humour in a slim book covering everything you need to know about the international financial crisis.

An award-winning novelist (The Debt to Pleasure, Fragrant Harbour), Lanchester brings two desperately needed qualities to the subject: an outsider's viewpoint and an engaging writing style. With lines such as, “The jet engine of capitalism was harnessed to the ox cart of social justice,” Lanchester injects an element of delight on a topic not normally associated with lively phraseology. He is also surely the first writer to employ a Charlie Parker saxophone solo as an analogy for a momentous event in financial philosophy.

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