The Test

Idir Jalil is a dentist from Iran. He lives in London with his wife Tidir and their two children, and he has spent months studying for the British Values Assessment. Passing means citizenship. Failing means the family is deported. He walks in ready for twenty-five questions on history and law.

Minutes into the exam, armed men storm the immigration office and take everyone hostage. The test does not stop. It becomes something else: a run of choices about who lives and who does not. Idir's own family is among the people the gunmen threaten.

Sylvain Neuvel, known for the Themis Files trilogy, writes The Test as a short, fast dystopian thriller. It turns a citizenship exam into a moral trap. The prose is spare. The tension does not ease once the gunmen arrive, and the book keeps asking who counts as worthy of belonging, without a comfortable answer.

At around 110 pages, The Test reads in a single sitting. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award in science fiction. The book suits readers who want speculative fiction that treats citizenship and immigration as a matter of life and death, not paperwork.