Recently long listed for the Booker Prize. Didn't make the shortlist cut. This isn't my cup of tea, but if you're interested, here's an Amazon review:
If all that Tom Rob Smith had done was to re-create Stalinist Russia, with all its double-speak hypocrisy, he would have written a worthwhile novel. He did so much more than that in Child 44, a frightening, chilling, almost unbelievable horror story about the very worst that Stalin's henchmen could manage. In this worker's paradise, superior in every way to the decadent West, the citizen's needs are met: health care, food, shelter, security. All one must offer in exchange are work and loyalty to the State. Leo Demidov is a believer, a former war hero who loves his country and wants only to serve it well. He puts contradictions out of his mind and carries on. Until something happens that he cannot ignore. A serial killer of children is on the loose, and the State cannot admit it.
Or there's this 44..
.
...which I listened to on audio last year and didn't like much at all.
And this little known Mark Twain novel (his last) that I recall not liking much.
I guess 44 isn't my number.
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