Delphi is, as you might expect from the title, a novel about the future, but also about the very recent and the very distant past. The narrator is a translator of German fiction and part-time classics lecturer at a London university, living in lockdown with her increasingly distressed 10-year-old son and her increasingly withdrawn partner Jason, who is drinking increasing quantities of alcohol. Her time is divided between trying to care for and home-school her son, trying to do her work and trying not to spend too much time on Twitter. None of these endeavours is particularly successful.
Meanwhile, she’s thinking about the future and particularly about her proposed book on ancient Greek techniques of prophecy. Each chapter heading introduces a way of divining the future – Rhapsodomancy: Prophecy by Poetry; Ololygmancy: Prophesy by the Howling of Dogs; Urticariomancy: Prophecy by Itches, and so on. Often we get a brief account of the Greek method, but sometimes just another day in lockdown. “I am sick of the future,” the book begins. “Up to here with the future. I don’t want anything to do with it; don’t want it near me.”
