Blast From The Past

Jan 14, 2026 9:46 PM

Author:Ben Elton

Blast From The Past

It's two fifteen a.m., you're in bed alone and you're woken by the phone.

Your eyes are wide and your body tense before it has completed so much as a single ring. And as you wake, in the tiny moment between sleep and consciousness, you know already that something is wrong.

Only someone bad would call at such an hour. Or someone good, but with bad news, which would probably be worse.

You lie there in the darkness and wait for the answer machine to kick in. Your own voice sounds strange as it tells you that nobody is there but that a message can be left.

You feel your heart beat. You listen. And then you hear the one voice in the world you least expect . . . your very own Blast From the Past.

Reviews

Only Ben Elton could combine uncomfortable questions about gender politics with a gripping, page-turning narrative and jokes that make you laugh out loud

—— Tony Parsons, author of Man and Boy

Elton at his most outrageously entertaining

—— Cosmopolitan

The action is tight and well-plotted, the dialogue is punchy, and the whole thing rolls along so nicely

—— Guardian

A lively thriller of sexual politics and morality. Elton's best book yet

—— Elle

A writer who provokes almost as much as he entertains

—— Daily Mail

A brilliantly vivid piece of storytelling

—— The Scotsman

Atmospheric coming-of-age tale by one of Norway’s most renowned writers

—— Observer

The detail is perfect; the emotions are raw and beautifully conveyed

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

Petterson’s novel is a compelling study… Petterson’s beautifully spare prose subtly captures the effort that comes with this seeming inaction, this lack of fight, providing us with a lens through which we come to see Audun’s grim inertia as a paralyzing struggle to forget the past and get on with the task of living

—— Observer

Beautifully crafted but undeniably bleak; its spare prose, mournfully succinct characterisation and disorientating chronology deliver an edgy read

—— James Urquhart , Financial Times

Melancholic

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

Covering the twenty years that turned Catherine the Great from a young bride on approval to the legendary Empress of Russia, Eva Stachniak's novel gives a magical insight into the hopes and fears that haunted the corridors of the St Petersburg palace. It brings alive the very tastes and textures of the mid-eighteenth century

—— Sarah Gristwood, author of Arbella and The Girl in the Mirror

An intimate portrait of 18th century girl-power

—— Independent

A wry moral tale exploring the little evasions and compromises of everyday life. Translator Agnes Scott does justice to Solstad’s measured voice

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

This short-but-striking novel quickly reveals itself to be…crime fiction, yes, but also a subtle and deeply introspective consideration of the inertia of lonely middle-age, its philosophy existentialist in the manner of Jean Paul Sartre, Ingmar Bergman and certain novels of Georges Simenon. The result is a highly complex and accomplished work

—— Billy O'Callaghan , Irish Examiner

Intriguing tale… Solstad expertly navigates the bizarre mind of a clever but lonely man locked in an existentialist nightmare

—— Telegraph

This is no straightforward crime novel…an exploration of guilt, inaction and moral quandaries

—— Nic Bottomley , Bath Life

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