April 2008 - and life is changing in Pepys Road. Petunia faces a bleak future, Shahid has an unwanted guest and the Police are investigating the postcards.

Capital - the new novel by John Lanchester is the story of one south London street, which has seen a hundred years of fortunes made and lost, of hearts broken, of first steps and last breaths. And then, one day a card with a simple message drops through each letterbox: 'We Want What You Have'...

At forty, Roger Yount is blessed with an expensive life, a stalled marriage and a job in the City. His hoped-for Christmas bonus of a million pounds might seem lavish, but with second homes and nannies to maintain it's starting to look more like a necessity. At eighty-two, Petunia Howe just sits in her window, perplexed by how Pepys Road has changed in her lifetime, wondering why anyone wants what she's got. Elsewhere in Pepys Road, Zbigniew has come from Warsaw to indulge the affluent in their interior decoration whims and traffic warden Quentina has exchanged political activism in Zimbabwe for encounters with enraged motorists. At the end of the road, Ahmed Kamal runs the cornershop. For them all, this non-stop city offers the chance of a different kind of life.

Capital interweaves the lives and stories of the residents of Pepys Road in an utterly compelling, post-crash, state-of-the-nation novel told with compassion, humour and truth; epic in scope, yet intimate and contemplative.

Capital is read by Rafe Spall and begins in December 2007 with the residents of Pepys Road preparing for Christmas, but the cards they receive aren't what they expect.

Producer: David Roper
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