The Panopticon

Fifteen-year old Anais Hendricks is smart, funny and fierce, but she is also a child who has been let down, or worse, by just about every adult she has ever met. Sitting in the back of a police car, she finds herself headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders where the social workers are as suspicious as its residents. But Anais can’t remember the events that have led her there, or why she has blood on her school uniform…

Reviews of The Panopticon

"It's in the Margaret Atwood/The Handmaid's Tale vein – very literary and suspenseful…Set in an altered reality – one that feels familiar and yet deeply unfamiliar, that embodies some of the dailiness of life, and yet slowly reveals itself to be a very different, much more sinister place." — Gillian Flynn, author of GONE GIRL "Each page sparkles with the ebullient and sinister magic of great storytelling … An utterly magnificent achievement." Irvine Welsh "Not just uncompromising and courageous. I think it's one of the most cunning and spirited novels I've read for years… An intelligent and deeply literary novel." — Ali Smith "Written with great verve and brio … An astonishing debut, I have a feeling that Fagan is a name we will hear more of." — Jackie Kay "The 15-year-old heroine and narrator, has a rough, raw, joyous voice that leaps right off the page and grabs you by the throat…This punkish young philosopher is struggling with a terrible past, while battling sinister social workers…The glorious Anais is unforgettable." The Times