‘How could it be true that a woman like me could need a man’s love to feel like a person, to feel that I was worthy of life? And what would happen when I finally wore him down and took it?’

Megan Nolan’s debut novel Acts of Desperation was hailed as a masterpiece by the literary world when it was published in 2021. Searingly honest and darkly amusing, it tells the story of an obsessive relationship. Written in glimmering prose, it charts a young woman’s elation as she falls in love, and the obsession, anxiety and self-doubt that ensue. Nolan is also an acclaimed journalist and essayist whose writing appears in The New Statesman, The Guardian and The New York Times. In January 2022 she came to Intelligence Squared where she was in conversation with Bella Mackie, whose debut novel How To Kill Your Family was also a bestseller.

Praise for Acts of Desperation

‘Please believe the hype … a seriously exciting writer.’ – The Sunday Times

‘Oh my god! Such brilliant writing about female desire, codependent love, the ownership that’s taken of female bodies and how it corrupts our relationship to them. I identified hugely. Incredibly honest and visceral.’ – Marian Keyes

‘Megan Nolan is a huge literary talent, and her first novel is a love story like no other.’ – Karl Ove Knausgaard

‘This is an incredible debut . . . Poignant, poetic, raw and utterly unique – I couldn’t stop reading.’ – Pandora Sykes