Adam LeBor

Every author hopes their first novel will be garlanded with praise and become a global bestseller. It does happen: Terry Hayes’s 2013 debut, I Am Pilgrim, was a panoramic epic that was translated into 30 languages. The tricky part, naturally, is the next book. It’s taken a decade for his follow-up, The Year of the Locust (Bantam £22/Atria $32 to be published in February), to hit the shelves — so was the wait worth it? In short: absolutely. Hayes is an accomplished screenwriter as well as a nove…