Named one of Granta 's Best of Young British Novelists Anais Hendricks, fifteen, is in the back of a police car. She is headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders. She can't remember what’s happened, but across town a policewoman lies in a coma and Anais is covered in blood. Raised in foster care from birth and moved through twenty-three placements before she even turned seven, Anais has been let down by just about every adult she has ever met. Now a counterculture outlaw, she knows that she can only rely on herself. And yet despite the parade of horrors visited upon her early life, she greets the world with the witty, fierce insight of a survivor.   Anais finds a sense of belonging among the residents of the Panopticon—they form intense bonds, and she soon becomes part of an ad-hoc family. Together, they struggle against the adults that keep them confined. But when she looks up at the watchtower that looms over the residents, Anais realizes her fate: She is an anonymous part of an experiment, and she always was. Now it seems that the experiment is closing in. Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content Shortlisted for The Desmond Elliott Award Shortlisted for The James Tait Black Prize Shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize “Fagan has created a feisty, brass-knuckled yet deeply vulnerable heroine, who feels like sort of a cross between Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , and one of Irvine Welsh’s drug-taking Scottish miscreants from Trainspotting or Skagboys . Her novel is by turns gritty, unnerving, exhausting, [and] ferocious...A deeply felt and genuinely affecting novel.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times “Fagan has given us one of the most spirited heroines to cuss, kiss, bite and generally break the nose of the English novel in many a moon...there is no resisting the tidal rollout of Fagan’s imagery. Her prose beats behind your eyelids, the flow of images widening to a glittering delta whenever Anais approaches the vexed issue of her origins... vive Jenni Fagan...whose next book just moved into my ‘eagerly anticipated’ pile.” — Tom Shone, New York Times Book Review “[Fagan] grew up in what’s euphemistically called ‘the care system,’ and she writes about these young people with a deep sympathy for their violently disordered lives and an equally deep appreciation of their humor and resiliency...[Fagan has a] rousing voice, with its roundly rendered Scottish accent.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post “A classic coming-of-age tale.” — Boston Globe “Fagan’s style calls to mind fellow Scottish writer Anthony Burgess, whose novel A Clockwork Orange used similar lexicographic liberties to reinforce a theme of teenage dystopia.” — The Daily Beast “[A] terrific portrait of a young criminal...Fagan makes this ugly life somehow beautiful.”— Alan Cheuse, NPR “ The Panopticon [is] a terrifically gritty and vivid debut.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer  “She’s Oliver, with a twist. Anais Hendricks, 15, and the female protagonist of poetess Fagan’s first novel, cuts right to the chase as she chronicles the modern British foster care system.” — New York Post “The Panopticon is like its protagonist: tough as old boots and always ready with the fists, but likely to steal your heart if you’ll just slow down and listen.” — National Post “[A]   fabulously sharp-elbowed debut novel...Not since Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud have we met such motor-mouthed metaphysics. Layered with repetitions, peppered with hallucinations, The Panopticon reads like the monologue of a poet for whom words are bricks, they are arrows, they are, when well chosen, the way out.”  — Minneapolis Star Tribune  “Fagan creates a complex and vulnerable character...[and] even though Anais makes it hard for you to love her, you can’t help wishing her out of her plight and cheering her upward.” — Bust (four stars) “The Panopticon is an exquisite first novel—Jenni Fagan has created a dark, disturbing, yet ultimately hopeful portrait of a young woman growing up alone in the Scottish foster care system. To say it is haunting is an understatement—I kept wanting to set a place for Anais at the table with the rest of my children.” — Vanessa Diffenbaugh, New York Times bestselling author of The Language of Flowers “Jenni Fagan has created a high-resolution portrait of a throwaway kid. Fifteen-year-old Anais, born in a mental ward, tumbled through the social work system, violated and violent, high on whatever, each decision she makes is a jaunty wave as she sails past the next point of no return. This is a contemporary tragedy of the highest order." — Carol Anshaw, New York Times bestselling author of Carry the One “In the Margaret Atwood/ The Handmaid’s Tale vein—very literary and suspenseful. I like books set in an altered reality—one that feels familiar and yet also deeply unfamiliar, that embodies some of t