In the summer of 1959, an Antiguan immigrant in north-west London lives the
last day of his life. A mother looks back on her early forays into matters
of the human heart, considering the destructive nature of desire. A
disgraced cop stands amid the broken shards of his life, unable to move
forward into a future that holds no place for him. A teenager chases
spectres through virtual reality, trailed by a little girl with a runny
nose and no surviving family. We all take a much-needed break from this
mess, on a package holiday where the pool's electric blue is endless, while
political and environmental collapse happen far away to someone else. Zadie
Smith presents a sharply alert and slyly prescient collection about time
and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our
present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.