Nick Harkaway

Lester Ferris, sergeant of the British Army, is a good man in need of a rest. He's spent a lot of his life being shot at, and Afghanistan was the last stop on his road to exhaustion. He has no family, he's nearly forty, burned out and about to be retired. The island of Mancreu is the ideal place for Lester to serve out his time. It's a former British colony in legal limbo, soon to be destroyed because of its very special version of toxic pollution - a down-at-heel, mildly larcenous backwater. Of course, that also makes Mancreu perfect for shady business, hence the Black Fleet of illicit ships lurking in the bay: listening stations, offshore hospitals, money laundering operations, drug factories and deniable torture centres. None of which should be a problem, because Lester's brief is to sit tight and turn a blind eye. But Lester Ferris has made a friend: a brilliant, internet-addled street kid with a comic book fixation who will need a home when the island dies - who might, Lester hopes, become an adopted son. Now, as Mancreu's small society tumbles into violence, the boy needs Lester to be more than just an observer. In the name of paternal love, Lester Ferris will do almost anything. And he's a soldier with a knack for bad places: 'almost anything' could be a very great deal - even becoming some sort of hero. But this is Mancreu, and everything here is upside down. Just exactly what sort of hero will the boy need?

"Gloriously exuberant and entertaining." (Guardian). "A funny, moving and thought-provoking tale...It's brilliant." (Independent on Sunday). Sergeant Lester Ferris is a good man in need of a rest. He's spent a lot of his life being shot at. He has no family, he's nearly forty, burned out and about to be retired. The island of Mancreu is the perfect place for Lester to serve out his time - and the perfect place for shady business, too, hence the Black Fleet of illicit ships lurking in the bay: listening stations, money laundering operations, drug factories and deniable torture centres. None of which should be a problem, because Lester's brief is to turn a blind eye. But Lester has made a friend: a brilliant, internet-addled street kid with a comic-book fixation who might, Lester hopes, become an adopted son. As Mancreu's small society tumbles into violence, the boy needs Lester to be more than just an observer. He needs him to be a hero.

In a near-future Britain, a distributed surveillance-democracy called The System knows everything you, and can even spy on your mind. It's a Panopticon country. But when state investigators then look into the head of a refusenik novelist named Diana Hunter, what they find there is not her life story but that of four other people, spread across thousands of years, all vibrantly real and each utterly impossible - and before they can unravel that puzzle, Diana Hunter, shockingly, dies as a result of the investigation, an unheard of result in a perfect system which protects everyone from harm.That's where Inspector Mielikki Neith comes in, a staunch believer in The System who is assigned to investigate the Hunter case. The only problem is that the teasing mysteries in the dead woman's mind may change all that. And these are extraordinary memories, ranging from the life of a banker named Constantine Kyriakos, who finds himself pursued by a shark that may in fact be a god; and an Ethiopian retired pop artist, Berihun Bekele, who picks up his brushes to create a virtual world called The System at the behest of his games' designer grand-daughter; and Athenaïs Karthagonensis, the jilted lover of one of the Church's most beloved saints, who seeks to resurrect her dead son with the help of a non-existent miracle; and then finally GNOMON, the acerbic post-human who is plotting to assassinate the next iteration of the Universe . . .The question is whether there is a truth hidden in the noise of all those lives, as Mielikki begins to suspect?Or is all that unfolding experience and drama simply a cover for some kind of attack upon the fabric of the most democratic nation state ever constructed?And the questions just keep coming. Who was Diana Hunter, and why are her books impossible to obtain? And above all, was Diana Hunter innocent all along - worse, could she have been correct to attempt to withstand a perfect, democratic system?

Gonzo Lubitsch and the narrator of THE GONE-AWAY WORLD have travelled a long way together since their childhood-meeting in the park sandpit. They were close, and then not so close, and then literally wrenched apart. And the world has changed too… THE GONE-AWAY WORLD is a hugely ambitious novel set in a time not far from today and utterly recognisable. The Jorgmund Pipe, the backbone of the world and the only thing keeping the Livable Zone safe from the unreal world, is on fire. Gonzo Lubitsch, professional hero and troubleshooter, is hired to put out the flames - but there's more to the fire, and the Pipe, than meets the eye. The job will take Gonzo and his unnamed sidekick - his chronicler and best friend since childhood - back to their own beginnings and into the dark heart of the Jorgmund Company itself. Part adventure, part comic opera, and part geek nirvana, THE GONE-AWAY WORLD is a story of love, pirates, mimes and apocalypses; the story of a world in need of heroic deeds, and the hero who discovers that he has to rely on every aspect of his personality in order to do the right thing.

The Jorgmund Pipe is the backbone of the world, and it's on fire. Gonzo Lubitsch, professional hero and troubleshooter, is hired to put it out - but there's more to the fire, and the Pipe itself, than meets the eye. The job will take Gonzo and his best friend, our narrator, back to their own beginnings and into the dark heart of the Jorgmund Company itself. Equal parts raucous adventure, comic odyssey and Romantic Epic, The Gone-Away World is a story of - among other things - love and loss; of ninjas, pirates, politics; of curious heroism in strange and dangerous places; and, of a friendship stretched beyond its limits. But it also the story of a world, not unlike our own, in desperate need of heroes - however unlikely they may seem.

Gnomon is an extraordinary novel, and one I can't stop thinking about some weeks after I read it. It is deeply troubling, magnificently strange, and an exhilarating read.' Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven'Nick Harkaway's most ambitious novel yet. [A] story of near-future mass surveillance, artificial intelligence and human identity ... An amazing and quite unforgettable piece of fiction.' Guardian'Harkaway dazzles.' Daily Mail'Wonderfully good.' Sunday TimesNear-future Britain is a state in which citizens are constantly observed and democracy has reached a pinnacle of 'transparency.' Every action is seen, every word is recorded and the System has access to thoughts and memories.When suspected dissident Diana Hunter dies in custody, it marks the first time a citizen has been killed during an interrogation. Mielikki Neith, a trusted state inspector, is assigned to find out what went wrong. Immersing herself in neural recordings of the interrogation, what she finds isn't Hunter but rather a panorama of characters within Hunter's psyche.Embedded in the memories of these impossible lives lies a code which Neith must decipher to find out what Hunter is hiding. The staggering consequences of what she finds will reverberate throughout the world.

El Tubo de Jorgmund es la columna vertebral del mundo y está en llamas. Gonzo Lubitsch, héroe de profesión y solucionador de problemas, es contratado para apagarlo. Pero hay más en el incendio y en el propio Tubo de lo que parece a primera vista. El encargo llevara a Gonzo y a su mejor amigo, el narrador, de vuelta a sus propios origenes y hasta el oscuro corazon de la Compañia de Jorgmund.El mundo que vimos desaparecer es una aventura vertiginosa, hilarante y epica, y la cronica de un amor y su perdida. Una odisea repleta de ninjas, piratas y conspiraciones politicas; con heroismos inesperados en tierras extrañas y peligrosas y con una amistad puesta a prueba al limite. Pero tambien es la historia de un mundo no demasiado distinto al nuestro y desesperadamente necesitado de heroes, por improbables que estos sean.Exuberante... de una imaginacion salvaje. The TimesInmensamente gratificante... Esta distopia es, literalmente, la peor pesadilla de cualquiera de nosotros... No es solo muy inteligente, tambien es aterradora... The TimesUna obra magnifica, desmesurada, epica... Se puede convertir facilmente en un clasico contemporaneo. Su alcance y ambicion son extraordinarios, su ejecucion te quita a menudo el aliento y su estilo es por turnos hilarante, excesivo, devastador, elegante y profundo... Ind...

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