Something to Answer For certain he is really dead, then apparently actually does so. At the end of the novel, though it is uncertain how much of what was related actually took place or how much was a fever or drunken dream, Townrow comes to believe that a citizen is not responsible for the morality of his government and has only himself and his own actions to answer for. Something to Answer For Something to Answer For is a 1968 novel by the English writer P. H. Newby. Its chief claim to fame is that in 1969 it won the inaugural Booker Prize, which
In the Light of What We Know – but for our century.” Rebecca Mead of "The New Yorker" wrote that the novel was "talky and intellectual, while also unfolding a riveting drama: a deeply satisfying book," and that it was remarkable, “a 21st-century novel written with the ambition of scope of a 19th-century novel, and bearing the seriousness of purpose of a 20th-century one.” "In the Light of What We Know" earned its author the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Britain's oldest literary prize. It was long-listed for the Orwell Prize 2015, the Guardian First Book award 2014, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2015,