If you’ve spent any time in the literary circles of London or scrolled through the more high-brow corners of BookTok lately, you’ve probably heard the name Jo Hamya. She’s the author of Three Rooms and The Hypocrite. People love her. Or they’re deeply unsettled by her. Sometimes both. Honestly, calling someone a "hypocrite" is usually an insult, but in Hamya's world, it’s a craft. It’s the lens through which she views an entire generation of people who say one thing on social media and live another reality behind closed doors.
She’s young. She’s sharp. And she’s writing about the exact things that make us uncomfortable: money, class, and the performance of being a "good person."
Jo Hamya and the Art of Being a Hypocrite
Let’s get one thing straight. When we talk about the hypocrite Jo Hamya, we aren't talking about a personal scandal. We are talking about her 2024 novel, The Hypocrite. It’s a meta-narrative that feels so real it’s almost intrusive. The story follows a young woman named Sophia who writes a play about her father—a famous, aging, slightly chauvinistic novelist. She invites him to the play. He sits in the audience. She watches him watch a version of himself that he doesn't recognize.
It’s meta. It’s messy.
The brilliance of Hamya’s writing is that she doesn't take sides. Is the father a dinosaur? Yes. Is the daughter a self-righteous millennial who is also exploiting her family for art? Also yes. That’s the "hypocrite" element. We are all performing. We all judge others for the very things we do when no one is looking. Hamya captures that specific 21st-century anxiety where your politics and your lifestyle are constantly at war.
Why Her Writing Hits Different Right Now
Most modern fiction feels like it’s trying too hard to be "important." Hamya just writes what’s true. In Three Rooms, she tackled the housing crisis not through statistics, but through the soul-crushing experience of renting a room that isn't really yours. It’s about the precariat.
You know the feeling. You have a PhD but you’re living in a house share with three strangers and a moldy ceiling. You post about wealth redistribution on Twitter while checking your inheritance status. Hamya doesn't blink. She looks right at that contradiction.
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The prose is jagged. One minute she’s describing a piece of toast with the precision of a surgeon, and the next she’s dropping a philosophical bomb about the death of the middle class. It isn't "relatable" in that cheap, commercial way. It’s relatable because it’s painful.
The Generational Divide in The Hypocrite
The core of the buzz around the hypocrite Jo Hamya stems from how she pits Boomers against Gen Z. But it isn't a caricature.
In the book, the father, Sophia’s dad, represents a specific kind of 20th-century masculinity. He thinks he’s a liberal. He thinks he’s "one of the good ones." Then he sees his daughter’s play and realizes the world sees him as a relic. On the flip side, Sophia represents the "moral clarity" of the younger generation, which can often veer into cruelty or, well, hypocrisy.
- The Father: Believes in "great art" above all else, even if it hurts people.
- The Daughter: Believes in "lived experience," but uses her father’s life as raw material without his consent.
Who’s right? Neither. Both.
That’s why people are searching for this. We are living in a time where every dinner table conversation feels like a minefield. Hamya took that minefield and turned it into a stage play within a novel. It’s brilliant. It’s also kind of exhausting if you’re looking for a hero. There are no heroes in a Jo Hamya book. Just people trying to justify their own existence.
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Real-World Context: London, Class, and the Literati
Hamya herself is part of the world she critiques. She’s worked at The Booker Prize Foundation. She’s been an amanuensis (basically a high-end literary assistant) for famous writers. She knows how the sausages are made.
When she writes about a girl struggling to find a "room of her own" in London, she isn't guessing. She’s lived the reality of the "intern class"—people who have high cultural capital but zero actual capital. This is the breeding ground for hypocrisy. When you are forced to look successful while being broke, you become a performer by necessity.
What Most People Get Wrong About Her Work
A lot of critics tried to pigeonhole Three Rooms as just a "Brexit novel" or a "millennial novel." That’s lazy.
The real meat of her work is about the limitations of language. We have all these words now—gaslighting, privilege, emotional labor—but are we actually communicating? Or are we just using these words to win arguments? In The Hypocrite, the dialogue is a weapon. People don't talk to understand; they talk to dominate.
If you’re reading Hamya and thinking, "Wow, I’m glad I’m not like these characters," you’ve probably missed the point. You are like them. We all are.
- The performative guilt: Feeling bad about your lifestyle but not changing it.
- The surveillance: Constantly watching how others perceive us.
- The bitterness: That low-simmering anger that the life we were promised (home ownership, stability) doesn't exist anymore.
The Influence of Virginia Woolf
You can’t talk about Hamya without mentioning Woolf. Three Rooms is a direct nod to A Room of One's Own. But while Woolf was asking for space to create, Hamya is asking if that space even exists in a world where every square inch is monetized.
It’s a darker take. A more cynical take. But it’s the take we need in 2026.
How to Actually Read Jo Hamya (A Practical Guide)
If you’re new to her work, don't start with the reviews. Just jump in.
First, grab Three Rooms. It’s short. You can finish it in an afternoon, but you’ll think about it for a month. It captures that specific feeling of being "in-between." In-between jobs, in-between houses, in-between identities.
Then, move on to The Hypocrite.
Read it specifically looking for the moments where you disagree with a character, and then ask yourself why. Usually, it’s because they’ve touched a nerve. Hamya is an expert at finding that nerve and pressing down hard.
Actionable Insights for the Modern Reader
- Audit your own performance: Next time you post something "virtuous" online, ask if your private actions match that energy. That’s the Hamya test.
- Look at the "Space" you occupy: Are you renting your life, or do you own it? Not just financially, but intellectually.
- Embrace the mess: Stop looking for "likable" characters in fiction. The most honest books are the ones where everyone is a bit of a disaster.
Jo Hamya is basically telling us that the "hypocrite" isn't just one person—it’s the modern condition. We are all trying to navigate a broken system using the tools of the system itself. It’s contradictory. It’s annoying. It’s the truth.
To truly understand the impact of the hypocrite Jo Hamya, look at your own bookshelves and your own bank account. The gap between what we want to be and what we can afford to be is where her stories live. Whether you find that depressing or liberating depends entirely on how much of a hypocrite you’re willing to admit you are.
Start by picking up a copy of The Hypocrite at an independent bookstore. Don't just order it on Amazon—that would be too ironic, even for Hamya. Read the opening scene where the father is sitting in the dark theater. Pay attention to his physical discomfort. It’s a metaphor for how we all feel when our privilege is pointed out to us in public. Then, go for a walk through a neighborhood you can't afford to live in. Notice the windows. Notice who is inside. That feeling of being on the outside looking in? That is the essence of Hamya’s contribution to modern literature. It’s uncomfortable, it’s sharp, and it’s the most honest thing you’ll read this year.