Coming soon from Pantheon: THINGS WE DIDN’T SEE COMING, the debut story collection from Steven Amsterdam set in a not-too-distant dystopian future is one to keep a close eye on. Amsterdam has already received fantastic praise in Australia and the Aussies are so fanatical about the book, they recently named it The Age Book of the Year (A major honor)! Random House’s own Field Rep, Ann Kingman, raved about the book on Booksonthenightstand.com: “I began a new book the other night, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it….I can’t seem to get the landscape out of my head….There are moments of light and humor in this book even amidst the bleak, and perhaps that is why I can think about it as I go about my day. I’ve been rationing my reading: a story a night. I’m savoring it as it haunts me.”
Richly imagined, dark, and darkly comic, these nine stories follow the narrator over three decades as he tries to survive in a world that is becoming more savage as cataclysmic events unfold one after another. In the first story-set on the eve of the millennium, when the world as we know it is still recognizable-we meet the then nine-year-old narrator fleeing the city with his parents, just ahead of a Y2K breakdown of the grid, signaling the world’s transformation and decline. The remaining stories capture the strange- sometimes horrific, sometimes unexpectedly funny-circumstances he encounters in the no-longerso- simple act of survival. Yet, in each story, we see that despite the violence and brutality of his days, the narrator retains a hold on his essential humanity.
Send the words “DIDN’T SEE IT COMING” in an email to pantheon@randomhouse.com and the first 3 responses will receive an early galley of the book!
THINGS WE DIDN’T SEE COMING will be available in stores on February 10, 2010, but in the meantime, preorder your copy here.
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