Narrating Differences through Space: John Lanchester's "The Wall"

The article intends to investigate narratives of difference in the traditionally utopian space of the island through a close reading of John Lanchester’s The Wall (2019), a dystopian climate fiction (cli-fi) novel set in a near future in which catastrophic climate change has left millions displaced. After situating the novel in the context of BrexLit, climate change fiction, and global contemporary debates about border epistemologies and climate-induced migration, the analysis opens with a comparison between The Wall and Thomas More’s Utopia, and then moves to analyze the geographical organization of Lanchester’s island as a space of deep sociological division that nevertheless maintains hope and a utopian horizon within the pages of critical dystopia.