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Drayton and Mackenzie

Alexander Starritt

Book cover: Drayton and Mackenzie

‘A big, bustling novel about love, friendship, money, ambition and the 21st century, packed with humour and intelligent observations … I finished it tear-stained’ Sunday Times

‘Will have you hooked … an ode to the enduring power of male friendship’ The Times Best Summer Books

‘My book of the summer’ Janice Turner

‘Thrilling’ Guardian

Longlisted for the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025

For the first time since university, James and Roland’s paths through life – one drawn in straight lines, the other squiggled and meandering – began to cross…

James Drayton has always found things too easy. By the time he leaves university, he’s still searching for a challenge worthy of his ambitions, one that will fulfil the destiny he thinks awaits him.

Roland Mackenzie, on the other hand, is an impulsive risk-taker, a charismatic drifter with boundless enthusiasm but a knack for derailing his own attempts to get started in life.

When a chance encounter in a pub reunites these old acquaintances, it sets them on an unpredictable course through the upheavals of the 21st century, and triggers an unlikely alliance. Against the backdrop of the financial crash and its aftermath, they strive to create something that outlasts them, something that will matter.

Drayton and Mackenzie is a stunningly ambitious, immediately engaging and ultimately deeply moving novel both about trying to make your mark on the world, and about how a friendship might be the most important thing in life.

THE MUCH-ANTICIPATED NOVEL FROM AN AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

CAN FRIENDSHIPS CHANGE THE WORLD?

Hardback

ISBN: 9781800755260

Published: July 3, 2025

Ebook

ISBN: 9781800755277

Published: July 3, 2025

Book cover: Drayton and Mackenzie

Category:
Fiction

Reviews for Drayton and Mackenzie

‘A romp through the 21st century via two bright young people – but beyond all the money and success Drayton and Mackenzie is really about friendship’ – Laura Hackett, Sunday Times

‘A big, bustling novel about love, friendship, money, ambition and the 21st century, packed with humour and intelligent observations … picture Great Expectations meets The Big Short I finished it tear-stainedAn epic tale of ambition and male friendshipSunday Times

‘Will have you hooked … an ode to the enduring power of male friendship’The Times Best Summer Books

‘Outstanding … James Drayton is a powerhouse brain unable to connect with others, while Roland Mackenzie is charm-positive but can’t quite get his act together. Without ever really intending, they entwine their lives to defy their business detractors, create an extraordinary friendship and pursue the enigma of tidal power to a pioneering conclusion. A novel like no other – awards await’Strong Words

‘A heart-warming story of a friendship that is very much of its times’ – Mail on Sunday

Drayton and Mackenzie is simultaneously a breathtaking conspectus of the 21st century, an exciting rags-to-riches adventure and a deeply moving story of male friendship. A novel has not done so much so well since Michael Chabon’s friendship epic, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay … the real delight of Drayton and Mackenzie is the relationship of its leads. This evolves as you’d expect — beginning in incomprehension and developing into something unbreakable — yet is so beautifully done, I’ll admit my vision wasn’t the clearest by the end. (Seriously, if you thought Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies was sad . . .) I don’t know how Starritt is going to top this one’Financial Times

‘An epic masterpiece encompassing some of the most pivotal points of our century … a powerful, poignant and frequently funny rags-to-riches adventure that plunges readers to the seabed off Orkney before blasting into the stars above Sutherland’ – Sunday Post

‘One of Starritt’s many skills is how he ratchets up the poignancy, creating real characters rather than caricatures’The Spectator

‘Deft and engaging … A thoughtful study of male friendship’Evening Standard

‘I could not put it down … This gripping story raises a question: Why are so few business novels being written?’ – Adrian Wooldridge, Bloomberg

‘Alexander Starritt can write as elegantly as Alan Hollinghurst and as fluently as Jonathan Coe. It is the prose that keeps us turning the pages of this epic novel of friendship and twenty-first-century life’TLS

‘My book of the summer … this tale of two very different young men who together build a company is sweeping, clever, deeply researched and very funny … It is also that rare thing, a book that is positive (but clear-eyed) about those fashionably maligned beings, men’ – Janice Turner, The Times

‘A warmly comic saga of male friendship … This tale of two entrepreneurs dips into the perspectives of real-life tech moguls, with thrilling results’ – Guardian

‘Drawn with amazing realism and detail making the sweep of history profoundly personalIrish Times

Author

Alexander Starritt

Author image: Alexander Starritt

Alexander Starritt was born in Scotland in 1985. His debut novel The Beast was a 2017 Spectator book of the year; his second novel, We Germans, was published in 2020 and translated into six languages. It was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in the United States, and nominated for the Prix Femina, Prix Medicis and Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France. Starritt has also translated from German, including Stefan Zweig’s A Chess Story, and a selection of Kafka’s short stories, The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man.