Natasha Brown burst on to the British literary scene in 2021 with her award-winning and critically acclaimed debut novel, Assembly. That slim but substantial work of autofiction articulated powerfully the experience of a young black woman dealing with the racism entrenched in Britain’s colonial legacy as she navigates her career in finance.
In her sophomore novel, Universality, Brown deploys her skilful satire to tackle rhetoric itself, examining with nuanced precision the relationship between language, truth and power. The first third of the novel is a fictional piece of long-form journalism that achieved viral status for its journalist, Hannah. The title of the magazine is Azalon, the name of the stock character in Ancient Greece who is an impostor with delusions of grandeur.
Hannah has achieved her journalistic feat by investigating the violent bludgeoning of a man with a solid gold bar at a rave on a West Yorkshire farm. To solve the mystery of what happened, she must decipher the connections between “an amoral banker, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement.” Hannah writes that “a modern parable lies beneath, exposing the fraying fabric of British society, worn thin by late capitalism’s relentless abrasion.” If Hannah’s journalism doesn’t quite convince as being exceptional enough to launch her career so dramatically, it is nonetheless written with a stylish confidence that speaks to the themes underpinning the novel itself.
The remainder of Brown’s compact novel focuses on the consequences of Hannah’s article. A particular skill of Brown is her ability to write with a cool objectivity a spectrum of characters across class divides and varying ideologies who are all, for the most part, multidimensional, complex creations.
There is no sense of the author imposing judgment; instead she is unflinching in a particularly illuminating social analysis that sustains a clear-eyed appraisal. Hovering between literary thriller and a state-of-the-nation novel, Brown is confident in her ability to offer readers both enlightenment and entertainment.
In the wake of Brown’s debut, she was named on the prestigious Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, raising huge expectations for what can notoriously be a writer’s difficult second novel. With Universality, Brown more than delivers on her promise.
