A comic triumph… How do you make a show of people who are doing such a fabulous job of making a show of themselves? McEwan manages to do so with great style and comic panache.

The Cockroach is a satirical novella for our times, sharply observed and often very funny… an entertaining read, confronting the reality of Britain today.

The latest instalment in his [McEwan’s] imaginative scrambling of English social history and of reality… [McEwan] finds room, amid all the Hansard send-ups and diplomatic silliness, to allude to more troubling physical-philosophical quandaries, while positing an alternative history of economic thought that culminates in a wayward version of our present.

Brexit has such a camp, knowing, performative quality that it is almost impossible to inflate it any further… McEwan manages to do so with great style and comic panache… very funny… McEwan’s comic parable at least provides some relief from a political farce that has long gone beyond a joke.

A well-constructed novella by a master of the art.

The satire is impeccably managed. Cleverly rendered, yet imprecise parallels ensure there is sufficient distance for the humour to be effective… it is comic relief in the darkest sense.

Like McEwan's other work, The Cockroach is a beautifully written novella and an in-depth critique of Britain's current political situation… I found this an exciting and inventive retelling of Kafka's classic tale, and a clever commentary on not just Brexit, but modern British politics as a whole.

One of the most celebrated political novels of the 20th century