Saying Goodbye to Verena

Can anyone’s life be reduced to an economic equation? What if it can?

Stella and Verena have been the closest of friends since Cambridge. Outwardly successful and expensively dressed, they regularly meet up for Caesar salads at the Landmark Hotel. But this lunch is to be their last.

In a cold, businesslike tone, Stella announces that the sum of her life is worth more in death than by staying alive. And she assures Verena that by the end of the afternoon, she will agree with her. Will you?

With a chillingly rational argument, calling on thinkers from Foucault to Dawkins, moral theory to game theory, this book claims there is no place for ethical individuals in corporate society. If this is true, what are the consequences?

"This is a most unusual and powerful book, combining vivid and convincing characterisation with deep analytic skill - a modern Platonic dialogue, exploring some of the darkest corners of the moral (or submoral) world of modern finance and its human as well as social and political cost. It needs and deserves wide attention, and puts the question to us as to whether we are, as individuals and as a culture, prepared to take the steps we need to take in order to free ourselves from a literally lethal set of practices and assumptions."
- Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury until Dec 2012

“This is a very thought provoking book which challenges the corporate culture of the 21st Century global economy.”
- Brian Griffiths or Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach (British
politician and former advisor to Baroness Thatcher)