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The Rhyl Poster
A political and legal thriller about money and power—featuring mind-altering substances, shadowy power players, and EU politics—by the author of Remainder and Satin Island.
Benjamin Stanton embodies both the promise and the peril of the twenty-first century. A brilliant legal theorist working behind the scenes at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, his interpretations, drafts, and opinions as good as make the laws that shape the lives of millions.
At a conference in the Swiss Alps, Stanton encounters the enigmatic Pirotti, who introduces him to the small blue pills that soothe the pain of a Gulf War wound that still troubles him. Soon, addicted to these petits bleus, he starts experiencing visions of sublime nerve-rays conjoining all humanity in a great web of righteous, divine benevolence. He also finds himself passing out Court documents to Pirotti and his associates. Entrusted by the Court with the drafting of a landmark ruling, Stanton instead turns to preparing a sprawling, revelatory document that will destroy the world that he and his colleagues have labored to build, the better to bring into view the new law, the new dispensation that the era so desperately craves.
An ultramodern parable, in which the tormented descendants of Dostoyevsky and Conrad are cast adrift in the game space of Grand Theft Auto, The Rhyl Poster is a book about the incalculable substance of the self, the burden of historical and individual guilt, and the elusive, but very real, dream of justice. Tom McCarthy's new novel is a work of high style, unsettling lyricism, and brilliant invention.
Benjamin Stanton embodies both the promise and the peril of the twenty-first century. A brilliant legal theorist working behind the scenes at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, his interpretations, drafts, and opinions as good as make the laws that shape the lives of millions.
At a conference in the Swiss Alps, Stanton encounters the enigmatic Pirotti, who introduces him to the small blue pills that soothe the pain of a Gulf War wound that still troubles him. Soon, addicted to these petits bleus, he starts experiencing visions of sublime nerve-rays conjoining all humanity in a great web of righteous, divine benevolence. He also finds himself passing out Court documents to Pirotti and his associates. Entrusted by the Court with the drafting of a landmark ruling, Stanton instead turns to preparing a sprawling, revelatory document that will destroy the world that he and his colleagues have labored to build, the better to bring into view the new law, the new dispensation that the era so desperately craves.
An ultramodern parable, in which the tormented descendants of Dostoyevsky and Conrad are cast adrift in the game space of Grand Theft Auto, The Rhyl Poster is a book about the incalculable substance of the self, the burden of historical and individual guilt, and the elusive, but very real, dream of justice. Tom McCarthy's new novel is a work of high style, unsettling lyricism, and brilliant invention.
240 pages, Paperback
Published October 6, 2026
About the author
Tom McCarthy
109 books511 followersTom McCarthy — “English fiction’s new laureate of disappointment” (Time Out, September 2007) — is a writer and artist. He was born in 1969 and lives in a tower-block in London. Tom grew up in Greenwich, south London, and studied English at New College, Oxford. After a couple of years in Prague in the early 1990s, he lived in Amsterdam as literary editor of the local Time Out, and later worked in British television as well as co-editing Mute magazine.
His debut novel Remainder was first published in November 2005 by Paris-based art press Metronome. After becoming a cult hit championed first by British webzines (it was 3:AM Magazine’s Book of the Year for 2005) and then by the literary press, Remainder was republished by Alma Books in the UK (2006) and Vintage in the US (2007). A French version is to be followed by editions in Japanese, Korean, Greek, Spanish and Croatian.
A work of literary criticism, Tintin and the Secret of Literature, was released by Granta Books in June 2006. It also came out in France and an American edition is in the offing.
Tom’s second novel, Men in Space came out in 2007.
He has published numerous stories, essays and articles on literature, philosophy and art in publications including The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement and Contemporary Magazine, as well as in anthologies such as London from Punk to Blair (Reaktion Books), Theology and the Political (Duke University Press) and The Milgram Experiment (Jan van Eyck Press). His story, “Kool Thing, Or Why I Want to Fuck Patty Hearst” appeared in The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired By Sonic Youth (Serpent’s Tail) in 2008.
His ongoing project the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious avant-garde network that surfaces through publications, proclamations, denunciations and live events, has been described by Untitled Magazine as ‘the most comprehensive total art work we have seen in years’ and by Art Monthly as ‘a platform for fantastically mobile thinking’. In 2003 the INS broke into the BBC website and inserted propaganda into its source-code. The following year, they set up a broadcasting unit at the ICA from which more than forty ‘agents’ generated non-stop poem-codes which were transmitted over FM radio in London and by internet to collaborating radio stations around the world.
Tom has also tutored and lectured at various institutions including the Architectural Association, Central Saint Martins School of Art, the Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths College and Southern California Institute of Architecture. He recently taught a course on ‘Catastrophe’ with Marko Daniel at the London Consortium.
His debut novel Remainder was first published in November 2005 by Paris-based art press Metronome. After becoming a cult hit championed first by British webzines (it was 3:AM Magazine’s Book of the Year for 2005) and then by the literary press, Remainder was republished by Alma Books in the UK (2006) and Vintage in the US (2007). A French version is to be followed by editions in Japanese, Korean, Greek, Spanish and Croatian.
A work of literary criticism, Tintin and the Secret of Literature, was released by Granta Books in June 2006. It also came out in France and an American edition is in the offing.
Tom’s second novel, Men in Space came out in 2007.
He has published numerous stories, essays and articles on literature, philosophy and art in publications including The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement and Contemporary Magazine, as well as in anthologies such as London from Punk to Blair (Reaktion Books), Theology and the Political (Duke University Press) and The Milgram Experiment (Jan van Eyck Press). His story, “Kool Thing, Or Why I Want to Fuck Patty Hearst” appeared in The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired By Sonic Youth (Serpent’s Tail) in 2008.
His ongoing project the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious avant-garde network that surfaces through publications, proclamations, denunciations and live events, has been described by Untitled Magazine as ‘the most comprehensive total art work we have seen in years’ and by Art Monthly as ‘a platform for fantastically mobile thinking’. In 2003 the INS broke into the BBC website and inserted propaganda into its source-code. The following year, they set up a broadcasting unit at the ICA from which more than forty ‘agents’ generated non-stop poem-codes which were transmitted over FM radio in London and by internet to collaborating radio stations around the world.
Tom has also tutored and lectured at various institutions including the Architectural Association, Central Saint Martins School of Art, the Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths College and Southern California Institute of Architecture. He recently taught a course on ‘Catastrophe’ with Marko Daniel at the London Consortium.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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October 14, 2026Abandoned at about 33% , simply not the right reader for this, couldn't get into it properly ( or at least I didn't feel anything at all reading this, rendering it all sort of pointless to continue. (not for me stylistically, tone-wise, etc. )) .
July 30, 2026
Oh. Really bad. Tom :(
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June 3, 2026Holy smokes batman i need this between my hands yesterday
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews