Just like tens of millions of other Britons, Ian McEwan is angry about Brexit. Anger, controlled and focused, is a necessary ingredient for good satire.  Neatly reversing Kafka’s famous story, McEwan’s latest book opens with a cockroach waking from sleep to discover it has been transformed into a man. And not just any man, but the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland tasked with delivering “Reversalism”.

Early reviews of the novella, many of them po-faced, seem to me to have missed the point entirely.  The Cockroach is satire, suffused with anger and hot from McEwan’s keyboard. It’s not subtle, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s occasionally very funny, but its purpose isn’t to make us laugh. It’s not “balanced”; it has no interest in demonstrating any understanding of, or sympathy for, the motives of those who support leaving the EU. McEwan’s fictional cockroaches are ruthless, cruel, vindictive and, most of all, completely without principle.  Any resemblance to actual cockroaches, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.