RUPERT THOMSON is the author of eight highly acclaimed novels, of which Air and Fire and The Insult were shortlisted for the Writer's Guild Fiction Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize respectively. His most recent novel, Death of a Murderer, was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Novel Award. His memoir This Party's Got to Stop was published in 2009.

It is winter, somewhere in the United Kingdom, and an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night. He learns that he is the victim of an extraordinary experiment. In an attempt to reform society, the government has divided the population into four groups, each representing a different personality type. The land, too, has been divided into quarters. Borders have been established, reinforced by concrete walls, armed guards and rolls of razor wire. Plunged headlong into this brave new world, the boy tries to make the best of things, unaware that ahead of him lies a truly explosive moment, a revelation that will challenge everything he believes in and will, in the end, put his very life in jeopardy ...

'Sharply written ... One of his great strengths, in a genre that usually takes physical description as read, is an ability to evoke a landscape'

'The ideas behind Thomson's novel buzz with originality, sparking contemporary connections and recalling Brave New World and even Gulliver's Travels ... Divided Kingdom thrums with ideas and is a moving and, at times, gripping book'

'This book is brave in a Brave New World kind of way, and should earn Thomson tons of readers'

'A hyper-real hallucination lit by sumptuous prose and fuelled by a prodigal gift for atmosphere and suspense'

The breakthrough novel from the critically acclaimed author of The Insult and The Book of Revelation