For the first time since university, James and Roland’s paths through life – one drawn in straight lines, the other squiggled and meandering – began to cross…

James Drayton has always found things too easy. By the time he leaves university, he’s still waiting for a challenge worthy of his ambitions. Roland Mackenzie, on the other hand, is an impulsive risk-taker, a charismatic drifter with a knack for derailing his own attempts to get started in life.

When a chance encounter in a pub reunites these old acquaintances, it sets them on an unpredictable course through the upheavals of the twenty-first century, and sparks an unlikely alliance. Sent to Aberdeen during the financial crisis to lay off hundreds of workers, James and Roland begin to wonder: what if they were made for more than this? What if together they could build something grand and lasting – something that might even change the world?

Longlistedfor the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025