Lionel Shriver

Author, journalist.

“I was scared of being cancelled, and that sobered me.”

Few writers define the 21st century as comprehensively as Lionel Shriver. Moreso than arguably any other, one can look through her catalogue and get a sense of where the public conversation was. In 2003, she released the wildly popular We Need To Talk About Kevin (later adapted into the critically acclaimed film of the same name), a chilling post-Columbine exploration of psychology and youth violence that earned her the Orange Prize. The novel launched her into the consciousness of pop culture, a position that she’s maintained through decades of acclaimed best-sellers and acid-tongued writing, a tradition she continues to this day. Last year, she published her most recent work - Mania.

Why did we invite her on?

Lionel isn’t merely a best-selling author and household-name journalist - she’s also one of the most outspoken figures in her field. While a self-proclaimed lifelong Democrat, she doesn’t shrink away from criticising the party’s more, let’s say, ‘divisive projects’, from the response to COVID to critical race theory to trans athletes, among others.

Her two worlds are beginning to bleed into one another - Mania is a razor-edged dystopian satire that exposes the absurdity of identity politics and how groupthink develops. Among stiff competition, it might be her most polarising work to date. However you felt (and we loved it), it certainly provided food for thought. But we wanted more, so what better than to sit down with the mind that created it?

What did we talk about?

Lionel’s works have rarely been so overtly political. What made her feel, at this moment, that it was so important to say something?

Fascinatingly, it was her instincts not to say anything that awoke her to the seriousness of the situation. The moment it shone into view came when the issue of trans identity suddenly centred itself at the forefront of political discourse, what she describes as a “sudden obsession.” It wasn’t the first mania (far from it), but something was different this time.

“The instruction on the box [read] you may not criticise it in any way, or your career would be over. I have a reputation for being outspoken, even idiotically so, and yet I was so aware of it being a dangerous subject that I steered clear of it … I was scared of being cancelled, and that sobered me.”

To Lionel, the last dozen years have been defined by manias, naming gender identity, #MeToo, COVID, and climate change as examples - social doctrines that do not welcome good faith discussions and intelligent debate. Their advocates resemble hysterical cult members more than they do rational actors.

”They were demonstrations of our collective power to lose our minds … It doesn’t have a political character. It is not a problem of the left or right - it is a problem of the species.”

But if that’s true, why are all the manias Lionel listed in the domain of the left? It wasn’t conservatives who heralded the expanding definition of gender. If the right are as prone to hysteria as their rivals, where is that happening today?

Lionel sees it in the place we’re all already looking: Trump.

But why?