Illustration: Uli Knörzer for Bloomberg; Source Photo: Rii Schroer/Eyevin
In a frank interview, We Need to Talk About Kevin author Lionel Shriver discusses the sociological concerns behind her new novel, which imagines a house overrun by migrants.
April 2, 2026 at 1:00 AM EDT
“Mankind is divisible into two great classes, hosts and guests,” is the epigraph to Lionel Shriver’s new novel A Better Life. The quote, from essayist Max Beerbohm, sets the scene for Shriver’s story of a home taken over by outsiders — a metaphor, she tells me, for the surge in immigration to the US under President Joe Biden.
Immigration enforcement continues to be contentious in America. The fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in January led to Democrats in Congress restricting funding for the Department of Homeland Security. To backstop depleted TSA ranks, the Trump administration has now deployed ICE to airports.
Shriver has often tackled complex or contentious issues in her fiction, from school shootings (We Need to Talk About Kevin) to obesity (Big Brother), assisted suicide (Should We Stay Or Should We Go) and economic collapse (The Mandibles.) She’s also a regular columnist for Britain’s Spectator magazine, and the link between these elements of her writing formed part of our discussion.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to an extended version in the latest episode of The Mishal Husain Show podcast.
Your new book has a family and a house in New York at the heart of it. Take us into the story you tell.
I first got the idea watching then New York City Mayor Eric Adams announce on the news that the city was planning to start a program to deal with the hundreds of thousands of migrants coming in during the Biden administration. They would pay New Yorkers to put up migrants in their spare bedrooms. As it turns out, this program never happened. I thought, That’s a brilliant setup. What could go wrong? [Laughs]
As I think you’re hinting, plenty does go wrong in the book. There’s Gloria, the woman whose home it is; Martine, the woman from Honduras whom she takes in; and Gloria’s son Nico, your main character.
Yes. It’s all seen through the eyes of this 26-year-old layabout. He has an engineering degree but has done absolutely nothing with it. He doesn’t want to be anything. He doesn’t want to do anything. Ultimately, of course, he doesn’t want to be grown up.
But the key dynamic in the book is between Nico and the migrants who end up living in the house. It is a metaphor, isn’t it? It’s about immigrants taking over America.
Yes. [Joe] Biden let in at least 10 million immigrants. We are not sure. It could be as much as 20 million, because you only keep track of the people who want to be kept track of. 1
1 It’s harder than you might imagine to find a precise figure for the number of immigrants — including those with a legal right to enter the US — over a presidential term. The surge across the southern border that began in 2021 slowed after Biden’s June 2024 executive order restricting asylum during periods of high crossings.
The United States is in a unique position because it is being hoisted on the petard of its own rhetoric. We’re a nation of immigrants. Therefore there’s some kind of a follow on from that — which I don’t believe is valid — that we have no right to keep anybody out. Because that would be pulling up the drawbridge.
Then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams visits with asylum seekers taking shelter at a high school in Brooklyn in January 2024. Photographer: Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office/AP
It’s been part of America’s message to the world. As I read the book, I was thinking about Reagan’s farewell speech, where he talks about the “shining city on the hill” and how America is “a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom… hurtling through the darkness towards home.”
That’s the kind of rhetoric I’m talking about.
And it’s helped make America rich, right? It continues to be the most powerful country in the world.
Yes. But you don’t become rich, necessarily — and the UK knows this as well — by letting in a lot of people who start out poor, are not well-educated, have very few skills and are going to be net takers [from] your social welfare system. 2
2 Nearly 12 million immigrants arrived in the US between 1870 and 1900. In that period, immigrants often went into occupations similar to the native-born, whereas today the average immigrant earns less than natives upon arrival in the US. However, American innovation has long relied on high-skilled immigrants, who are overrepresented in the number of patents registered in recent decades.
Although economies need all kinds of jobs. Care workers.
Yes. But the Danes and the Dutch have both done extensive research on particular nationalities and how much, on average, they either contribute or cost. There’s a huge disparity. 3
3 Denmark has been implementing policies to deter asylum claimants and make refugee status temporary, attracting attention from other countries keen to follow suit. In the Netherlands, a paper on the consequences of immigration for public finances has been influential, and debates on asylum-seekers and immigrants have contributed to the downfall of the past two governments.
I would advocate a more discriminating immigration system, in the best sense of the word. That is, be choosy. Let in people who are going to contribute more money than they take [and] are very likely to assimilate. Either [they] speak the language already, or learn the language and join the national project. I would like to see both the US and the UK be selective about who they let in.
I’m sometimes mistaken for somebody who’s just anti-immigration, but I’m not at all. I’m an immigrant — first to the UK and now to Portugal.
The UK’s immigration system is choosy. It gives visas to the people it wants. But let’s go back to your book. There are upsetting and enraging scenes in it, because there is a takeover of the house. The picture you paint is very evocative, but the situation in the US has completely changed. The latest figures show a decline in international immigration.
Yes. And I should clarify, I’m not a big Trump supporter. That’s another point that a lot of people miss. 4
4 Shriver voted Democrat up until 2024, when she did not vote.
But you approve of the end to what was happening at the southern border.
It was out of control. It has put enormous pressure on, especially, the social care systems of cities. I really concerned myself with New York, which was inundated with more people than it could handle.
New York has an odd and uniquely self-destructive policy of promising a right to shelter to anyone who arrives. And you almost wonder why anyone pays rent there because the city is obliged to put anyone up who doesn’t have a place to live.
Overall in terms of welfare and social provision in the United States, immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits.
Maybe, as a whole. But I guess that’s what I’m talking about.
That the people who were coming across the border illegally are overwhelmingly the kind of migrant that is going to cost the US taxpayer money over their lifetime.
That situation is over. When you look at the latest statistics, not only has there been a big decline in immigration, but the overall population of the US may start to decline this year. Is that a good thing? Or do you have concerns about what it means for economic growth and the sustainability of systems into the future?
I think it’s a good thing, on a sociological level.
Your ancestors would have been migrants, wouldn’t they?
Yes. My great-grandparents on both sides came from Germany.
What people seem underaware of is that after absorbing many millions of people — almost all of whom were from Europe, so there was a certain civilizational continuity there — the US shut down immigration in 1924, let practically nobody in, and that lasted until 1965.
I think that period of letting nobody in — not kicking anyone out — was crucial for knitting together a coherent, unified American population. That was the successful melding — the successful melting pot into which I was born. Nobody was hyphenating their identity. We were just Americans. 5
5 The Immigration Act of 1924 did not shut down immigration but built on previous restrictions through quotas favoring those from the British Isles and Western Europe and barring arrivals from Asia — which became a major source of tension between Japan and the US. After 1945, the US did admit and resettle refugees displaced by World War II.
Again, that was part of the projection of America to the world. Come here and you can be Americans. That’s what your ancestors would have been drawn towards.
I’m just saying that we have taken in so many people. A pause now would be wise.
Newly arrived immigrants awaiting examination at New York City’s Ellis Island in 1905. Photographer: Getty Images/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive
The big difference demographically is that American women were having babies at that time. That’s the implication of the current statistics — nowhere in the world have countries really been able to manage a population decline without immigration, because you need to replace your workers.
I think that’s probably the strongest argument for a permissive open-border immigration policy — but I don’t think it should be the only consideration. The ideal solution to this problem is to induce a cultural awakening whereby people have more children.
Nowhere’s achieved that.
I am skeptical about that, but that’s the ideal solution. 6
6 Shriver herself does not have children, writing in 2005: “I could have afforded children, financially. I just didn’t want them.” In a Weekend Interview last July, demographer Jennifer Scuibba said there was no evidence that incentives such as South Korea’s “baby bonuses” lead to a sustained rise in fertility.
That’s why I’m wondering if you have any concerns about that idea of immigration decline — and therefore population decline — because it does have serious economic considerations.
Yes, but there are serious social and political consequences to letting many people in from very different cultures. I think that there should be middle ground. Let in some people, but preferably give advantages to the more culturally compatible nationalities.
Those coming across the southern border were largely Christian.
They’re coming from countries where America has projected its power. The Monroe Doctrine, the “Donroe Doctrine,” that This is our sphere of influence.
I think that the overwhelmingly Hispanic immigrants coming up through the border during the Biden administration — and historically for the last 50 years — have a higher likelihood of ultimately assimilating, especially over multiple generations.
But you just said you didn’t like them coming in those numbers.
I don’t like massive illegal immigration. I am all for legal immigration, and the United States would actually do better to loosen up on the legal side. I think we should let more people in legally, and make it easier and cheaper.
Often in your books there are observations about America which are striking. I’m thinking about The Mandibles, a portrait of a family in an America of the future. You have scenes in that book that are about government excess and overreach — soldiers barging into people’s homes, wanton destruction. It made me wonder what you think of the tactics of ICE?
I don’t like the tactics. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t deport anybody. I don’t think that the two shootings in Minneapolis look justifiable. I think that the whole look of the operation has been overly militarized. They don’t look like police, they look like the army. I think it’s been too aggressive.
On the other hand, this whole business of having sanctuary cities and even sanctuary states means that the authorities are not cooperating with the federal law enforcement. And since ICE is prioritizing going after criminal aliens, these sanctuary localities have made that much harder. 7
7 Typically, “sanctuary cities” refers to jurisdictions that limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities in order to protect undocumented immigrants. President Trump has blamed ICE shootings, in part, on sanctuary policies and the failure of cities to cooperate with ICE.
A lot of people in ICE detention are not criminals.
Well, one of the reasons they are ending up arresting more of what’s known as the ‘collateral damage’ — people who don’t have criminal records — is because they can’t just go to the jails when these people are being let out and put them into ICE custody.
The sanctuary city policy is backfiring [on its] own terms. If they wanted to protect people who didn’t have criminal records from deportation, then they’re doing the wrong thing.
There are other aspects of ICE tactics beyond the use of force. Like going into a Hyundai car plant and rounding up South Koreans, from a country that is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the US.
I don’t defend the way these things are done.
ICE agents at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on March 28, 2026. Thousands of agents were deployed to airports after TSA employees refused to work without pay due to a partial government shutdown. Photographer: Ryan Murphy/Getty Images
I think you like the result of it. That’s the complexity I’m interested in.
I don’t like the fact that they shot two people.
The one thing I do like is that these deportations — which by the way, are still fewer than Obama deported per year, and he didn’t get any stick at all — are getting a lot of press. It’s sending a signal. 8
8 Notably, Obama was labeled “deporter in chief” by pro-immigration groups after stepping up immigration enforcement.
You were born in North Carolina. Why did you leave the US as a young woman back in the mid-1980s?
I had an appetite for adventure. The United States seemed like a known quantity. I wanted to find out about other places. I was motivated to set books in other places.
Initially, I was thinking I would lead a very peripatetic life and I would change countries every time I wrote a new book. This was a tall order, and it was a complete misreading of my own character. I’m much more of a homebody than that. I discovered that I was far more interested in staying in one place for a long time and really learning about it and knowing people. I stayed in Belfast long enough to make enemies. That’s when you’ve really arrived. 9
9 Shriver’s decision to move to Northern Ireland surprised and interested me, as it was during the period of sectarian conflict. Her time in Belfast led to Ordinary Decent Criminals, a novel about an American woman who’s traveled the world and chosen Northern Ireland as her latest destination.
The early influences in your life, sitting in church listening to your father preach — does some of your skill with language come from seeing how your father used words?
Yes, probably. I couldn’t stand going to church as a kid and I rebelled against it. I’m still not a practicing Christian of any kind. However, my father was a fine orator and I think that helped me. I also grew up in a household where — as you’re advised to do with children — they used full, complex, educated vocabulary. So I grew up learning fun, long words. That was a huge favor to me.
So you rebelled against church. You also rebelled against femininity, right? You decided to change your name to Lionel from Margaret.
Yeah, I think that was part of it. I was not a girly girl. I grew up between two brothers and I’ve always been ambivalent about being female. If I had a choice to start with, I’d probably choose to be male. That may be simplistic. The thrust of my approach to feminism, as opposed to femininity, is that I’m interested in minimizing the importance of sex.
I feel that I have more in common with men than I have differences. I like the company of men. When I was younger, the thrust of feminism was more interested in erasing the hard line between the sexes and recognizing our commonality. I’m still in that place.
It’s interesting to hear you talk about that in the knowledge that your next book is around transgender issues.
That’s one of my biggest problems with the transgender movement, the emphasis on the importance of sex and [it] being so determinative of identity. I think that’s a false version of identity. I don’t derive a lot of the meaning of my life, and who I think I am, from my sex. It’s just not that important to me. It’s one of the reasons that I haven’t been a big advocate for feminism — not that I think there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s not what interests me. Just because I was born female in a certain era doesn’t mean I’m obliged somehow to put all my energies into that.
Did your engagement in seeing transgender issues play out make you feel more female? That’s where the battle lines were drawn. For those who have objected to the growth of the transgender movement, it was like, No, we are female. I think you are coming to it from a slightly different direction.
Yes. It’s not that I’m defending my sex from people who want to invade: No, you can’t have it. I’m saying, What’s so great about being female? What’s so great about being either sex? That’s not what I understand to be an identity.
When I was growing up, having an identity didn’t have to do with race. It didn’t have to do with sex. It had to do with what bands did you listen to, what books did you fall in love with, what movies knocked your socks off; what did you want to do, what did you hate, whom did you love?
The trans thing doesn’t even have to do with sex — you know, having sex. It’s all about stereotypes of what it means to be male and female. Those are the same stereotypes I rejected when I was 15.
The UK was the country you lived in for nearly 40 years. I’m curious about why you left?
There was a host of positive reasons. My husband is a jazz drummer. He’s played with Portuguese musicians for years so we had a kind of ready-made alternative social life. We were both reaching an age that if we were going to ever make a major geographical change, we’d better do it soon — otherwise it would pass us by. We’d probably just age in place or — worse, in my view — withdraw back to the United States.
On the negative side, I felt things are not going very well in this country and I didn’t have to be a part of that deterioration. There were little things. The new tax system for self-employed people — [filing] tax returns five times a year. I found that unacceptable. It’s a claim on my time. That’s the kind of thing that had a lot of influence on me.
No, that was not a major factor.
Really? I’ve heard you suggest —
A profile that misquoted me altogether. 10
10 Shriver was referring, I believe, to an interview published shortly before we spoke, but I had also read a 2023 column headlined “I’m leaving Britain – and I feel guilty.” Among the “negative drivers” she cited was the UK government letting in “a staggering 610,000 net extra foreigners last year for whom there is no provision; the only country I know of with poorer control of its own borders is the United States.”
Well, tell me in your own words. I’ve heard you say things like the neighborhood you were living in, in London, changed. It became Nigerian.
It was mostly, yes, North African. It had been a white working-class area and the original population had completely disappeared.
That was part of your thinking, wasn’t it? That you felt you weren’t “functionally living in England” anymore?
Well, that is correct. London is no longer an English city. But that was not the driving reason I left the country. 11
11 On the Thinking Class podcast in 2024, Shriver said of her old neighborhood in London: “I think the white British population is now down to something like 37%. It’s probably lower now. And I was basically living in little Nigeria. And that’s, I mean, nothing against Nigeria in Nigeria, but I wasn’t functionally living in England.”
I’ve heard you say on podcasts that the experience of Muslim immigrants to the UK and Europe has been “catastrophic.”
I am worried that we’re dealing with a certain civilizational incompatibility. I think that’s especially the case when we’re dealing with mass immigration.
The experience of Muslims in the United States has been very different because the quantity has been small and American Muslims are overwhelmingly well-integrated with the rest of the country. They’re usually well educated. They earn a lot of money. They fit in well with US society.
That’s one of my concerns about mass immigration as opposed to immigration. When you establish whole communities of people from elsewhere, there’s no need [for them] to fit in with the larger population. 12
12 The quote in my question comes from an episode of the Conversations with Coleman podcast in February 2026, where Shriver said, “The experience in Europe and the UK of taking in large numbers of Muslims has been catastrophic. There has been very little assimilation. It’s led to enormous social friction.”
These are very broad things you’re saying about assimilation, but the home secretary [Shabana Mahmood] is a Muslim. The mayor of London [Sadiq Khan] is a Muslim. The youngest Nobel laureate in the world [Malala Yousafzai], a Muslim, lives here. So, you are generalizing.
Of course I’m generalizing, we’re having a conversation. There’s been a lot of integration at the top — politically and socially — but on the ground, there is a discomfort.
Do you think your fiction has been changed by your immersion in social and political issues? I’m trying to think of another novelist who writes as much nonfiction as you do, at the same time as their novels. I’m wondering what the crossover is.
I think there’s considerable crossover. I’m interested in the world. I’m interested in big issues.
I’m getting older and life is short. If I’m going to participate in the world as opposed to stay back, be an artist, write these rarefied pretty sentences — that’s a choice. I have made, some would say, a sacrifice in cheerfully exposing what I think in nonfiction — therefore I have sacrificed any sense of mystery. I am horribly accessible. You don’t have to spend a lot of time wondering what I’m like, and what I think. You just have to open the newspaper.
I was reading We Need To Talk About Kevin again before this interview. You could easily see it as being about a school shooting, but actually it’s about a female protagonist and her attitude to motherhood and marriage. There are so many deep characterizations. In A Better Life, I think you’re not going quite as deep into the characters. Are you writing books perhaps faster than you did in the past?
No, I don’t think I’m writing them faster. I think they’re a little shorter. Part of that is I’m editing more. Readers in general — insofar as there are any of them left — prefer shorter books now because of the famous crap attention span. There are things you can accomplish with a much longer book that you can’t with a shorter book.
You’ve also come back from having a major illness, a serious autoimmune disorder. How has that changed your routine, what you feel able to do, how you want to spend your day?
Well, nowadays it hasn’t changed anything. I had back surgery and it kicked off Guillain-Barré syndrome, which means your body is attacking its own neurological system. In a weird way, this was perfectly designed to fell me in particular because I’m a fitness nut, and the effect of dissolving your neurological system is to dissolve your musculature. So within weeks my biceps had drooped down into bingo wings, my muscles disappeared and I could not stand anymore. I was reduced almost to an infant. 13
13 Shriver once wrote of a routine that involved going for a nighttime run at 9 p.m., having dinner at midnight and going to bed at 3 a.m.
Little by little, once I was given medication to stop the process, I recovered my strength. But it was tedious as hell.
Has it changed you? Having such a shock to the system, realizing how frail we are when something like that hits us?
It was humbling. It made me incredibly grateful to my husband and my younger brother, who helped me through it. It certainly gave me a renewed appreciation for the importance of marriage and family. Certain friends really redeemed themselves, and did more for me than I would ever have expected them to do. I came out with a sense of gratitude. I was reminded that I was mortal.
I would like to say that I’ve carried that gratitude into my every waking hour — that I hold that with me all the time — but I don’t. I’m a normal person and once you can go back to walking around and jumping up and down, you take it for granted.
Mishal Husain is Editor at Large for Bloomberg Weekend.
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