Lionel Shriver is selling books, and losing friends, opposing Western guilt

Already a subscriber?“You cannot survive as a civilisation in a state of cringing shame,” says Lionel Shriver, as she launches into a broadside at the self-loathing that people are supposed to feel about the colonial sins of the West.

The 66-year-old lives with her husband, jazz drummer Jeff Williams, who is off playing in Slovenia; their life together is punctuated by periods at home and away. She misses her friends in London, but spends so much of her time reading and writing that she doesn’t feel lonely – “not consciously ... I am very comfortable spending long periods of time alone”.

, for instance. Has anyone ever suggested Shriver’s own work be combed by a sensitivity reader? “No one,” she says. “I mean, I’ve been with HarperCollins for a long time, so nobody in that company is that stupid.”Beyond the comic set pieces, there’s a serious intent in how Shriver depicts society being hollowed out from within, and it’s clear that it is no imaginary world in her sights. “Things start falling apart because functionality no longer matters; all that matters is ideology.

She once “slipped up” and used it about herself at a literary festival, she says, “and boy, did I get it in the neck from a couple of audience members who were just outraged… but I was talking about myself. Whom had I hurt?”

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