Black Bag

Black Bag is based on a real-world experiment from the sixties. In an interview with the Booker Prizes, Kennard said he was more interested in ‘the person playing black bag’ than in the study’s results. How does the novel transform a scientific experiment into an exploration of identity?

Black Bag was called ‘hilarious’ and a novel that ‘fizzes with wit’ in a review in the Guardian. Kennard uses humour liberally throughout the novel to explore much darker themes. What effect does this use of levity have on the way the story navigates its more difficult subject matter?

Throughout the novel, Kennard writes about the dire state of arts funding and declining creative freedom. Discuss what the novel is saying about work, productivity, and the all-consuming pressure to be economically useful.

‘I think it’s a statement about being a man,’ suggests Black Bag’s best friend Claudio, in reference to the bag. ‘A rejection of the current options.’ (Page 159). Against a backdrop of changing ideas about masculinity, what does it mean to reject the ‘current options’ for being a man? What do you think the novel is telling us about contemporary masculinity?

How does Black Bag’s experience as an actor shape the way he approaches the world and the people around him? In the novel, does he ever stop performing?

There are no quotation marks in the novel. How does Kennard’s lack of punctuation blur the boundaries between spoken dialogue and Black Bag’s interior voice? How does this shape your understanding of his thoughts and experiences?

In the novel, technology, data and online culture are intertwined with Black Bag’s experience, particularly through his friend Claudio, who tries to monetise Black Bag’s participation in the experiment. How does Kennard explore our relationship with technology and the ways in which it can be used to monitor and exploit? How close does this world feel to our own?

We never know Black Bag’s real name. Do you believe Black Bag was a reliable narrator? How did the way Kennard tells this story affect your understanding and viewpoint on the novel?

The novel’s central premise is absurd, and the world is deliberately strange, perhaps at times dystopian, although not unrecognisable from current reality. As a reader, how did you react to the disconcerting worldbuilding and the combination of the absurd and the familiar?

At the end of the novel, Black Bag finally receives the adulation he has spent years seeking. ‘I suppose I ought to bask,’ he says, before ending abruptly on an unfinished word. (Page 388). How does Kennard’s ending complicate Black Bag’s apparent moment of triumph, and what does it suggest about the relationship between recognition and fulfilment?