“To explain the lives of people living in this moment, to look at the historical forces that are shaping all of us, you have to look at business and technology. In our period, what is it that’s shaping us? I would suggest it’s the long fallout from the 2008 financial crisis and the technology revolution that’s been happening in California.” — Alexander Starritt

How to write a novel about our times? For Alexander Starritt, it means juxtaposing friendship and ambition alongside the grand historical forces of the age. Just as George Eliot did in Middlemarch. Whereas for Eliot, those forces were the 1832 Reform Acts and the industrial revolution, Starritt’s forces are the 2008 financial crisis and the digital revolution.

His novel, Drayton and Mackenzie, longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year, follows two ambitious Gen X’ers through the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The 2008 crash, Starritt says, ruined the lives of many of his generation. Rather than being in a Gramscian interregnum, our brave new 21st century world is already visible. But in contrast with many progressive critics of our neo-liberalism age, Starritt isn’t apocalyptic about the future. Think of Drayton and Mackenzie as Middlemarch and McKinsey. Revolutions will come and go, but, for Alexander Starritt, friendship and ambition are unchanging.

Five Takeaways

• The First Novel on the FT Business Book List in 15 Years. The literary and business worlds are so estranged that very few writers are attempting to write about the forces shaping people’s lives. That gap is what got Drayton and Mackenzie on the list.

• George Eliot’s Method. When Eliot wrote Middlemarch, her historical forces were the Reform Acts and the industrial revolution. Starritt’s: the 2008 crash and the California tech revolution. The friendship is the engine. The history is the canvas. Neither works without the other.

• Male Friendship: The Most Important Relationship Nobody Writes About. We’ve read too many books about romantic relationships. Friendship is incredibly important to almost all of us and gets almost no literary attention. Drayton and Mackenzie is his attempt to take it seriously.

• The Post-Liberal World Is Already Here. British jobs for British workers. Reshoring manufacturing. Keeping out undesirables. Gramsci’s interregnum: the old world dying, the new one not yet born. Starritt’s counter: the new world is already visible. It’s already here.

• European Optimism. The painful separation from America that America is forcing upon Europe may, in the long run, be for Europe’s own good. Take responsibility. Make your own decisions. Democracy needs renewal. Maybe we can get some agency back.

About the Guest

Alexander Starritt is a Scottish novelist and entrepreneur, author of Drayton and Mackenzie (Atlantic Monthly Press, June 2, 2026), We Germans, and The Beast. He lives in London.

References

Drayton and Mackenzie by Alexander Starritt (Atlantic Monthly Press, June 2, 2026): groveatlantic.com/book/drayton-and-mackenzie
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Adrian Wooldridge, “Bring Back the Big Business Novel,” Bloomberg

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

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Chapters:

00:00:31 The FT Business Book longlist: first novel in 15 years
00:02:03 Literary and business worlds estranged
00:03:08 Tom Wolfe? Never read him.
00:03:46 George Eliot’s method
00:05:02 Starritt’s day job
00:06:20 Male friendship vs romantic relationships
00:08:43 Apolitical and mission-driven companies
00:10:43 Does realism still work?
00:35:00 The post-liberal world is already here
00:40:00 Gramsci’s interregnum
00:46:55 European optimism
00:49:28 A new adventure novel in progress