A big, bold debut about the nexus of politics, money and art in contemporary Britain. The Howes are a wealthy Islington family who count the great and the good in arts and politics as their friends, and whose champagne-fuelled parties are a highlight of the social calendar. Sherard Howe is scion of a publishing dynasty and owner of a left-wing magazine, while his wife, Daphne Depree, is a feminist writer whose changes of opinion echo those of New Labour. Their son Henry, an Oxford graduate, seems unable to find a vocation and instead spends long and secretive stretches lying in the bath; his lack of ambition is further emphasised by his ruthlessly determined sister Afua - a mixed-race, beautiful and clever rising star of the Labour party who was abandoned in childhood by her alcoholic mother and subsequently adopted by the Howes. Henry is ambitious about one thing, though: his friend and unrequited love Buzzy, an aspiring poet who is - unhappily for Henry - in turn in love with Marcel, Afua's sophisticated and worldly boyfriend. 'Barbarians' is a debut of extraordinary scope and confidence; a terrifically observed novel of the Britain of the last few years.