The novel opens on Sunday afternoon, 16 December 2007. We pan over London, then zoom in on Gabriel Northwood, a barrister reading the Koran in Chelsea, while yards beneath him rattles a Circle Line train driven by half-Trinidadian Jenni Fortune. 

The novel is a countdown to the dinner party to be held the following Saturday night by Lance and Sophie Topping, a new Tory MP and his wife. The party leader will be there, along with a collection of bankers, hedge-fund managers, big donors (a curry-pickle magnate and