We think we've seen it all before, but the future still arrives without warning. For the wry narrator of this riveting journey, each shift brings him somewhere new-he's protecting his grandparents from the world outside their city gates; he's evacuating squatters before the rains wash away everything; he's enjoying a senator's coddled enclave in the hills; he's being stalked up a tree by a plague survivor; he's negotiating love with a woman who is far tougher than he could ever be; he's leading adventure tours for the terminally ill. Despite the permanent emergency of the landscape, this fractured evolution feels anything but grim-instead, it reveals what it means to survive. "A small marvel, overflowing with ideas." - The Guardian "Preternaturally assured, finely crafted and thoroughly accomplished, it deserves to be read widely." -The Age (Melbourne)