Keeping up with chaos: Fiction’s role in the Trump era

In a world of chaos, global spy chiefs and political operatives are increasingly spinning their real-life experiences into fiction. Now an Aussie politics veteran has joined their ranks.

As the real world seemingly goes mad, can fiction keep up? Absolutely – and more besides, says SAM GUTHRIE. As a veteran of Aussie politics and international affairs, he would know.

Robert Harris, the acclaimed author of Fatherland and the Cicero trilogy, was once asked why he so often opts for historical rather than contemporary settings in his political thrillers. His answer was simple: “Because I do just find reality so much more extraordinary than anything one can make up.”

It’s a fair point. In the era of Trump we have seen reality stretch the limits of plausibility.

Elected leaders refusing to concede defeat, state-backed disinformation campaigns hijacking social media, coups, assassinations, pandemics, trade wars, AI warfare. It’s no longer just the plot of a thriller, it’s your real time news feed.

‘The anxiety, confusion and instability of the present day’ … never better illustrated than in the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in July last year, ahead of the US election.

In his novel Imperium, Harris escapes the challenges of the modern thriller by telling a story of Ancient Rome with political archetypes, and power dynamics that feel strikingly relevant to the modern day, from populist demagogues and institutional decay to the fragile balance between law and ambition.

But what if we want stories that grapple directly with the anxiety, confusion and instability of the present day? Where do we go for stories that engage us, but also illuminate some of the chaos around us?

One answer has been the rise of the so-called ‘insider thriller’. In recent years, we’ve seen a surge in former spies, diplomats, and national security officials turning to fiction. Former MI5 Director General Stella Rimington brought her tradecraft to the page. CIA veteran David McCloskey’s Damascus Station is steeped in the detail of modern espionage. Alma Katsu, once an intelligence analyst, blends history and horror with chilling precision. And Jack Beaumont, the pen name of a former French DGSE operative, writes with the urgency of someone who’s lived the mission brief.

The same trend plays out on screen. Series like The Diplomat, advised by former CIA officers and US embassy staff, don’t just simulate diplomacy, they replicate the atmosphere, the emotional pressure. The realism adds gravity, but it’s also somehow reassuring seeing stories of professionals, showing up to serve, even when it’s messy.

‘The realism adds gravity’ … Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell in Netflix show The Diplomat.

It’s no surprise that the show runner of The Diplomat, Deborah Cahn, was also a producer involved in two other seminal series that dealt with the big geopolitical issues of their time: The West Wing and Homeland. Both were created during George Bush’s War On Terror and drew on significant input from former Washington political operatives and members of the US intelligence community.

Beyond the US, cult ‘insider’ shows like Slow Horses, Borgen and The Bureau are renowned for their authentic portrayals of political and intelligence spheres, achieved once again through the involvement of real-world insiders and experts.

Of course, this isn’t new.

The golden age of spy fiction was shaped by real-world operatives writing during another chaotic period – the aftermath of the Second World War and in the heat of the Cold War.

Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, and James Bond creator Ian Fleming all mined their experiences in British intelligence. But it was John le Carré – a former MI5 and MI6 officer – who transformed the genre. His books didn’t just use the mechanics of spying as a plot device; they exposed the grey world of deep moral corrosion in which geopolitical intruige takes place.

‘People caught in the undertow of betrayal and doubt ’ … Sam Guthrie.

In writing The Peak, I’ve tried to draw on that legacy. I spent twenty-five years working in international affairs as an Australian trade envoy to China, an adviser on Asia-Pacific public policy, and a senior official in government. I’ve sat at the tables where deals are made and where tensions simmer beneath the language of press releases and communiques. The story in The Peak is fiction but the world in which it unfolds, the mechanics of influence, the pressure points between business, media, and government those are drawn from lived experience.

Still, there’s a trap for so-called insiders. The risk is we write books that read more like technical briefings than novels: all plot, all procedure, no people. Just because you know how things work doesn’t mean you know how they feel.

That’s where le Carré was my greatest teacher. In The Perfect Spy, perhaps his most autobiographical work, he understood that the chaos of geopolitics becomes meaningful only when filtered through the eyes of those living it especially when those eyes belong to a son shaped by secrets and by the blurred lines between fathers and friends, loyalty and illusion.

I wanted The Peak to feel the same way: not just a story of politics and espionage, but of people caught in the undertow of betrayal and doubt – because that’s what most of us are doing now.

Fiction, at its best, doesn’t just mirror reality. It helps us make sense of it.

‘Rewrites the script for spy fiction in the 21st century’ … The Peak.

Sam Guthrie’s debut novel The Peak is a fast-moving story of friendship, love and betrayal, set against a background of brutal geopolitics in a world facing crisis. MI6 veteran Nigel Inkster said it “rewrites the script for spy fiction in the 21st century”.

Published by HarperCollins, The Peak is available now.

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Originally published as Keeping up with chaos: Fiction’s role in the Trump era