Last year, in her 13th novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047, Lionel Shriver imagined America slouching into dystopia merely by continuing current practices. Shriver, who is fascinated by ...

Ms. Shriver noted that she had been criticized for using in “The Mandibles” the character of a black woman with Alzheimer’s disease, who is kept on a leash by her homeless white husband.

As anyone versed in literary scandal will remember, at the 2016 Brisbane Writers Festival, Lionel Shriver gave the keynote ... and “The Mandibles” (2016) — stretched absurd situations ...