For fans of Atwood’s The Testaments, Adrian Lowe's second novel Pyr explores a totalitarian society driven to the brink.

Following an early release, young political prisoner Alfie flees his provincial village for the ruthless capital of an authoritarian state. With help from an old friend, Alfie lands a job as a waiter at an exclusive members’ club. There the political elite flaunt their excesses, and Alfie’s new surroundings soon launch him into hypocrisies of his own.

Dogged by his past and unable to face who he’s become, Alfie stumbles into an aging professor and forms a friendship over cheap beer and banned literature. A relic of an old world, the professor remembers life before the once-lauded revolution that put the current regime in place.

Fueled by free thought, Alfie's inner turmoil only deepens, until an irreversible decision sets events in motion that could seal not only his fate, but the fate of the entire nation.