Alexander hurst

Guardian Europe columnist Alexander Hurst’s debut memoir, Generation Desperation is available on January 29th, 2026.

In 2020, Alexander Hurst was a broke freelance journalist living in a cramped flatshare. As the world stuttered to a halt, he poured a meager mix of savings—and then borrowed more—into high risk options trades. Within a year he’d make over $1 million in gains, but the money would thinly cover the way he was breaking apart: obsessed, isolated, convinced that just one more trade would really change everything.

And then he’d lose it all.

This is the story of that rise and fall. But more than that, it’s an interrogation of the 21st-century ‘desperation capitalism’ that pushed millions to try and trade their way out of financial insecurity.

What does it mean to live in an economy where a lottery ticket feels more achievable than a mortgage? What becomes of a society that offers speculation in place of stability, and of those who despairingly try to play the game in order to leave it?

Darkly funny and devastatingly honest, Generation Desperation is the essential memoir of a generation promised prosperity, but handed precarity.

“A fantastically compelling personal story that is also the story of a generation . . . Told with perfect timing.’ — Simon Kuper, Financial Times

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