SOLVED. Modern fiction/contemporary/almost science fiction about a man whose past catches up with him in a dystopian United Kingdom, set not too far distant from now. [s]

[Anna]

I’ve totally forgotten the name of a book I read last year, pretty sure it’s a 2018/2019 release that was a booker recommendation etc. it’s set in a dystopian United Kingdom, day 20 years from now if the Tories were to totally decimate social welfare. The main character is a man who works a horrible desk job to get by, lives in a walled off part of the city and rents a room from an older woman who has a few different tenants. His world is shaken up when a woman pretends to be a hospitality staff and gets through security to tell him their daughter is alive but will be adopted out. The woman disappears, he tries to track her down in one of the scungier parts of town but finds her murdered. While trying to work out the fate of his daughter, he is taken back to the beginnings of his story as a high school student with a lot revealed about the corrupt government and absolute social anarchy .

[Mai]

84K by Claire North sounds like your book!

It came up searching "dystopian" "novel" "his daughter" "in england".

[Fresno Bob]

Mai wrote: "84K by Claire North sounds like your book!

It came up searching "dystopian" "novel" "his daughter" "in england"."

this is what I thought as well

[Anna]

YES thank you!!!!!

[Kris]

Anna, glad you found your book.

Mai, "in england" is an interesting search term, a replacement for UK.

[Mai]

That's what I learned it was called when I studied English in Catalonia! UK came later (in the classroom terms we learned, I mean). Sometimes it seems to help in the searches when you're not a native English speaker :-)