By Jim Mcleod 
The Captive by Kit Burgoyne, A satirical anti-capitalist horror debut for fans of Rosemary’s Baby!
From a new voice in horror comes a satirical Rosemary’s Baby for our conspiratorial present in which anti-capitalist activists unwittingly unleash staggering demonic forces when they kidnap a pregnant heiress.
Man Booker Prize longlisted author Ned Beauman created a rule for himself when writing what would eventually become his horror debut: end each chapter in the most lurid, shocking way possible. Beauman (whose horror fiction pen name is Kit Burgoyne) is known for award-winning dystopian novels that interrogate environmental collapse and capitalism with deft plots, sharp edges, and searing wit. And while some of the same themes are on display in The Captive, Burgoyne takes his horror debut to the next level with this satirical, supernatural firecracker for a conspiratorial 21st century.
For months, Luke and his underground revolutionary group have been planning their biggest operation yet: kidnapping 23-year-old Adeline Woolsaw. They don’t want a ransom—they want to expose the Woolsaw Group, the source of Adeline’s parents’ enormous wealth, a vast yet largely anonymous company that runs everything from military bases and mental hospitals to commuter trains and call centers.
But the revolutionaries get a shock when they bundle Adeline into their van. She’s about to go into labour. And she may not object to being kidnapped, if it allows her and the baby to escape her despotic parents. It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary child. He’s capable of setting off deadly weather events and summoning plagues of vermin. And that’s just the beginning.
Although Burgoyne tosses many balls in the air in The Captive, from the recognizable horrors of the all-seeing Woolsaw Group to the ancient evil responsible for the baby’s powers to the camaraderie between the revolutionaries who choose to fight back, he is able to juggle them skillfully, allowing each one to land in place in a violent, propulsive conclusion.
Dark, ultramodern and ruthlessly funny, Burgoyne’s is a must-read novel for a generation obsessed with anti-capitalist folk heroes and stories of resistance from people who feel powerless in a plutocratic power structure.
Praise for The Captive
“Sharp, bleak, funny, and disturbingly prescient, The Captive is a pitch-black blast of evil unpredictable fun.”
—Justin Taylor, author of Reboot
“Ultimately, Kit Burgoyne’s The Captive is not simply another clever, tense thriller; it plunges headlong into fanaticism, power, and that uneasy place where you begin to question if the good men and the evil guys are actually all that different . . . Thought-provoking.”
—Bestsellers World
“Rosemary’s Baby, but make it Patty Hearst! Come for the set-up, stay for the garden party. You’ll know it when you see it.”
—CrimeReads
Praise for Venomous Lumpsucker
Winner of the 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award
A Last Word with Matt Cooper Best Book of 2022
“Venomous Lumpsucker has a utopian future of sorts, but we hardly notice it. In this novel by Ned Beauman, the human species is on trial; the prosecution is at once clinically precise and distractingly funny . . .”
—The New York Times
“A madcap adventure story set in a dystopian world ravaged by climate change.”
—Variety
Kit Burgoyne
Kit Burgoyne is the horror fiction pen name of Ned Beauman, who was named one of Granta’s Twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 2013, and is the author of Boxer, Beetle (winner of the Goldberg Prize for Outstanding Debut Fiction); The Teleportation Accident (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winner of the Somerset Maugham Award); Glow; Madness Is Better than Defeat; and Venomous Lumpsucker (winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award). He has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, the London Review of Books, and Esquire. He lives in London. The Captive is his first novel as Kit Burgoyne.
Further Reading
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Claire Fitzpatrick