Things We Didn't See Coming

Paperback | 4 August 2011

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Richly imagined, dark, and darkly comic, "Things We Didn't See Coming" follows a man over three decades as he tries to survive - and to retain his humanity - in a world savaged by successive cataclysmic events. Opening on the eve of the millennium, when the world as we know it is still recognisable, we meet the then nine-year-old narrator fleeing the city with his parents, just ahead of a Y2K breakdown of the grid which signals the world's transformation and decline. In the wake of this develop strange, sometimes horrific, sometimes unexpectedly funny circumstances as he goes about the no longer simple act of survival: trying to protect squatters against floods in a place where the rains never stop; harassed (and possibly infected) by a man wracked with plague; functioning as a salaried embezzler of 'the state'; and, escorting the gravely ill on adventure trips. Yet despite the violence and brutality of these days, we learn that even as the world is spinning out of control essential human impulses still hold sway - that we never entirely escape our parents, envy the success of those around us and, chiefly, that we crave love.

Industry Reviews

A memorable debut...[and a] gleefully apocalyptic novel... as ever with this kind of dystopian fiction, there is a satisfying tingle in imagining an Armageddon just round the corner. But Amsterdam also gives his book an emotional heart -- Adrian Turpin * Financial Times *
What makes Things We Didn't See Coming such an impressive novel - and very impressive debut - is the playfulness of the writing contrasted to the grimness of the subject matter -- Christopher Potter * Sunday Times *
Rarely has the darkness of life been looked at with such buoyant irony, imaginative grace and disarming ardour. Read it once and then read it twice -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
A small marvel, overflowing with ideas. Scary, funny, shocking and touching by turns -- Justine Jordan * Guardian *
Here's that rare thing - a post-apocalypse novel that's more than doom and gloom. A treat to read - playful, intelligent and intriguing * Daily Mail *

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