Meanwhile in Dopamine City (Pierre DBC); Faber and Faber, 2021

It’s a big bad world out there, in Dopamine City.

All Lonnie Cush wants is to keep his kids safe.

But Shelby-Ann – his little girl, the maddening apple of his eye – has other ideas: Shelby-Ann wants her first smartphone.

So new realities are rocketing their way to 37 Palisade Row, where everything will change, every day, and at mortal speed. Until Lonnie finds himself in a stitch: he’ll have to join this new world, or wither in it. Or can he mastermind a vanishing act?

The story of a hapless father’s love and loss, and a speedball, starburst satire, Meanwhile in Dopamine City is a passionate, freewheeling work from the winner of the Booker Prize: a riotous cry for the soul and the flesh and the heart in the cooling bathwater of our automatic times.