Everything's Broken

We are told that we should not judge a book by its cover, and here's proof of the adage. By the dust jacket image at left, you'd image Nick Harkaway's The Gone Away World to be a story of drug-addled art dealers in the 1980's, extolling Nagel prints and early Prince records to Patrick Bateman and Sherman McCoy. This isn't that book, but it is just about every other kind of book...


The Gone Away World came to me as a recommendation from Jordan, a former Schwartz bookseller, and I'd agree with his sentiment that this book contains everything. Here's some of what you'll find:

An absurdist send-up of British style polite burreaucracy, ala Douglas Adams' Hitchiker trilogy; a love story; an exploration of the workings of identity akin to Philip K. Dick's Through A Scanner Darkly; ninjas; a coming of age story that mirrors, in parts, David Mitchell's Black Swan Green; mimes and magicians; a treatment of modern warfare clearly influenced by current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; a rabbit with the head of a fish; pirates; illustration of the dehumanizing agendas of corporate institutions, a theme shared with HBO's The Wire; karate lessons; extended rumination on Newton's first three laws; killer bees.

The Gone Away World might be lazily classified as science fiction, but easily half of the book takes place in the world as we'd recognize it (though with some minor differences, such as Cuba's position as a territory of the UK or "Cubritainia"). When things changes -- ie, when the world goes away -- it's clear that we're in what can rightly be called speculative territory. It's a hugely ambitious book, and impeccibily and accessibily written, full of lore and brushed with zinging British slang.

The paperback version, arriving in August, seems to have a slightly better cover, though the UK covers give -- to my eyes -- a better indication of what lies within.