The Kingdom, Yoel Noorali

In a surreal and hilarious mix of fiction and autobiography, The Kingdom follows a host of misfits and losers struggling to devote themselves to the religion of the 21st century: work. Set predominantly within the admin office of an NHS liver wing, the collection chronicles the strange behaviours of men cornered by a bureaucracy that lets indignity run rampant.

But before I heeded the call of accountancy, I needed to completely rule out the possibility I might be Philip Roth. My wife and I had agreed I’d admit defeat after four more years of clicking. Then, adequately crushed, my real life could commence. Until then, I’d open my novel in a tiny window in the bottom right-hand corner of my computer screen, the rest occupied by images from a stranger’s MRI, and write.

Yoel Noorali is a former NHS administrator and writer of fiction and non-fiction living in London. His short stories have appeared in Back Patio, Dispatches, The Fence, Neutral Spaces, and Somesuch, and his essays in Esquire, The Financial Times, The Observer and The Spectator.