The Method - Couverture souple

"This is a brilliant, disturbing and wildly imaginative picture of the nanny state run mad; how far should the State be allowed to poke its nose into a citizen's business?" (Kate Saunders Times)

"Zeh seems to have won every European literary prize going...Three years since its first publication in German (it is translated here with tremendous gusto by Sally-Ann Spencer), Zeh’s novel is even more relevant to our over-structure, over-quantified times." (Simon Ings Guardian)

"An impressively plausible account of a conformist society disguised as a utopia" (Lucy Popescu Independent)

"In Sally-Ann Spencer's superb translation from German, Juli Zeh's novel gives form to a dystopia that remains hauntingly recognizable" (Charlotte Ryland Times Literary Supplement)

"Thoughtful and intelligent...her main character Mia is an intellectual heroine as much as a physical rebel." (Lesley McDowell Sunday Herald)

Mia Holl lives in a state governed by The Method, where good health is the highest duty of the citizen. Everyone must submit medical data and sleep records to the authorities on a monthly basis, and regular exercise is mandatory. Mia is young and beautiful, a successful scientist who is outwardly obedient but with an intellect that marks her as subversive. Convinced that her brother has been wrongfully convicted of a terrible crime, Mia comes up against the full force of a regime determined to control every aspect of its citizens' lives.

The Method, set in the middle of the twenty-first century, deals with pressing questions: to what extent can the state curtail the rights of the individual? And does the individual have a right to resist? Juli Zeh has written a thrilling and visionary book about our future, and our present.