Tag Archives: Liz Pelly

Black Bag by Luke Kennard is a novel with an endearingly odd premise: an unnamed male actor signs up for a psychological experiment in which he wears a large leather black bag in public and must not speak or interact with anyone. It is based on a real study in 1967 at Oregon State University which recorded the students’ reactions, but nothing about the person inside the bag. The satire targets everything from academia to AI, and the humour is deployed well in the first half but somewhat runs out of steam in the second half. Black Bag is in contention for this year’s Booker Prize, although I think the surreal tone could make this one of the more divisive choices on the shortlist. Continue reading →