We Have Been Warned. A Novel.

Bookseller Notes

A notable departure for the author - forgoing the historical framework with which she had established her reputation as a novelist, and using a contemporary setting for her social criticism. It is set 'in Oxford, in an industrial district, and on the west coast of Scotland', with 'one whole section [...] staged in Soviet Russia' (blurb). The departure was not only a matter of its time-period; the incendiary nature of the work also brooked a separation from her previous publishers - it was her first fiction not to be published by Jonathan Cape, who, like Victor Gollancz (nevertheless among the lengthy list of 'Comrades' enumerated in its dedication), regarded its themes as unpalatable to a general readership, perceiving that its depictions of rape, murder, suicide and abortion would be disturbing in a way that comparable themes in her historical fiction had not.The author's Foreword acknowledges the 'intensive criticism' that it had received even prior to publication, whilst Constable are at pains to assert the 'comparative detachment' with which its themes are handled, despite the 'socialist, unindividualist outlook' that is represented therein, which 'fearlessly explores [] social and sexual morality' (blurb).