Product details
- ISBN 9780715656334
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 06 Aug 2026
- Publisher: Duckworth Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
One ordinary morning, in an unexceptional town, every mobile phone lights up with the same emergency alert.
In this compelling, darkly funny and moving debut novel, each of Vincent Yu’s utterly relatable, flawed characters is given a choice: in the face of mutually assured destruction, do we reach for grace and mercy or do we hold on to hate and fear?
Seventeen minutes later the town learns via text that it was a false alarm and the question changes. Can we forgive each other for what’s been said and done when the world didn’t actually end?
Vincent Yu is the winner of the 2021 Ashley Bourne Prize for fiction from Ploughshares. His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, Ninth Letter, Able Muse, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and works as a sales manager at W.W. Norton/Liveright.
