Universality : Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025

From the author of Assembly - THE MUST-READ NOVEL OF 2025 in the GUARDIAN, SUNDAY TIMES, GQ, ELLE, OBSERVER, INDEPENDENT, RADIO TIMES, BBC, HARPER'S BAZAAR and GOOD HOUSEKEEPING'Universality is very funny.' NEW STATESMAN'A sharp, clever take on contemporary culture.' DAILY MAIL'Enormous, nasty fun.' LITERARY REVIEW'Confirms Brown as one of the most intelligent voices writing today.' GUARDIAN'A smart, thought-provoking and pacy read.' MARIE CLAIRELate one night on a Yorkshire farm, a man is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar. A plucky young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between a banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist and a radical anarchist movement. She solves the mystery, but her viral longread expos� raises more questions than it answers. Universality is a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power. Through a voyeuristic lens, it focuses on words: what we see, how we say it and what e really mean. 'A searing, state-of-the-nation novel.' STYLIST'Confirms Natasha Brown as a major talent.' OBSERVER'A brilliant, unusual social x-ray of modern Britain.' ANDREW O'HAGAN'It is impossible to not get utterly sucked in.' JENNY MUSTARD'Original, vital, and unputdownable.' TESS GUNTY'An instant classic.' ELLE'Utterly phenomenal.' ELIZABETH DAY'Smart, twisty and original.' DAVID NICHOLLS'In a class of her own.' FINANCIAL TIMES