The Gone-Away World
and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Its scope and ambition are extraordinary, its execution is often breathtaking, and its style is by turns hilarious, outrageous, devastating, hip and profound...Hugely entertaining --Independent on Sunday
Breathtakingly ambitious...A bubbling cosmic stew of a book, written with such exuberant imagination that you are left breathless by its sheer ingenuity --Observer
A stunning debut --Scotland on sunday
There are delightful moments aplenty ... Any author who has come up with the beautifully silly plan of melding a kung-fu epic with an Iraq-war satire and a Mad Max adventure has to be worth keeping an eye on -- Guardian
Has the pace and action of an episode of 24 ... the agility of the narrative is one of the great strengths of this book ... Harkaway is robustly confident ... Particularly effective are his Matrix-like fight scenes, brought to life in meticulous yet flowing prose --The Times
Breathtakingly ambitious...A bubbling cosmic stew of a book, written with such exuberant imagination that you are left breathless by its sheer ingenuity --Observer
A stunning debut --Scotland on sunday
There are delightful moments aplenty ... Any author who has come up with the beautifully silly plan of melding a kung-fu epic with an Iraq-war satire and a Mad Max adventure has to be worth keeping an eye on -- Guardian
Has the pace and action of an episode of 24 ... the agility of the narrative is one of the great strengths of this book ... Harkaway is robustly confident ... Particularly effective are his Matrix-like fight scenes, brought to life in meticulous yet flowing prose --The Times
Observer
`Breathtakingly ambitious ... A bubbling cosmic stew of a book, written with such exuberant imagination that you are left breathless by its sheer ingenuity'
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinarily good first novel,
By M. R. N. Shackelford "mark shackelford" (Worthing, UK) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Gone-Away World (Paperback)
Mixing a range of styles - from Joseph Heller's "Catch 22", through the wacky world of "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, to the attention to detail and plot complexity of "Cryptonomicon" by Neil Stephenson - this is a superb book.
A post apocalyptic vision of the Earth, with most of the planet contaminated by an Information Bomb that makes Matter "Gone Away", and populated by refugees from the "Mad Max" films - I thoroughly enjoyed the book, even the various flash backs into a kung fu childhood. If you have enjoyed any of the above authors - give this a go.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Consider the world, unraveled,
By E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Gone-Away World (Hardcover)
Imagine a future world where a chemical solution is the only thing that keeps us from the ghastly mutated barbarism of the Gone Away World.
Now imagine the wacky, quirky upbringing that led to such a future, and an absurdist autobiography filled with ninjas, cowardly revolutionaries, apocalyptic monsters and the Go Away Bomb. Nick Harkaway's "The Gone Away World" plants him firmly in the center of clever, forward-thinking fiction, as a sort of postapocalyptic Robertson Davies. One night in the Nameless Bar, there's a blackout. Nothing new -- except the TV shows that the Pipe -- a vast network of hoses and lines that keeps the Livable Zone that way -- has caught fire. Along with his pal Gonzo Lubitsch and a bunch of random bar weirdos, the narrator sets out to save the day. But this takes him back to his earlier life -- a strange childhood mentored by the quirky ancient martial-artist Master Wu, mutating into Angry-Young-Manhood complete with dissatisfaction and lots of sex. He's arrested as a revolutionary ringleader, and joins up with the cake-esque named Zaher Bey. And then came the War that transformed the world into a place of monsters, darkness and utter weird. And in the present day, his road trip takes a sudden and bizarre turn when Gonzo shoots him. And as the narrator struggles to find what is going on at the heart of the mysterious Jorgamund Company, he learns of who has masterminded all the most horrific events of this twisted world... Nick Harkaway is one of those rare authors who can capture the surreal in a single observation -- a woman's hair, a phone call, a big mean dog. So in a book with "shark things with legs," people melded with horses, and ninja assassins, one can expect that things are going to get pretty strange. And "The Gone Away World" explores how that strange world came to be. Admittedly it starts off in a rather scatterbrained, manner in the first chapter, but levels out when it goes back to the narrator's shared history with Gonzo. But despite all the weirdness, Harkaway's writing has a curious, contemplative dignity that reminds me of Robertson Davies on crack ("may giant badgers pursue him for ever through the Bewildering Hell of Fire Ants, Soap Opera and Urethral Infections), but also has splatters of shocking vividity ("high towers and pale houses. The wind carries a murmur from its streets"). Seriously. Where else can you find a man proclaiming that he is "such a totally terrifying concentration of nerdhood" that he's "cracked the code for human social behavior using mathematics"? And it doesn't seem totally absurd? And the Gone-Away world is the strangest place of all -- it's got ninjas, mutants, revolutionaries and mystery corporations that Just Have To Be Bad, all interlinked. But Harkaway doesn't neglect the poignancy inherent in a world that has been wrenched out of shape -- we get to see the sad, ruined creatures that have lost not only their human bodies but their minds as well. The relationship between hero-stud Gonzo and the narrator is what really drives the novel onward, and there's absolutely nothing typical about their weird, slightly awkward friendship. Harkaway peppers the book with other oddities -- extremely mysterious women, odd bar-people, and the delightfully quirky little old martial-arts master who molded the narrator. Ah, Master Wu, we will not forget you soon. "The Gone Away World" sounds like the title of a suburban-ennui tale, but it's actually the tame description of a wildly surreal postapocalyptic thriller, with plenty of unusual twists and deliciously odd characters.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful reading experience,
By
This review is from: The Gone-Away World (Paperback)
I find it hard to start this review because there are so many facets to this book. I could say it's the story of some people and how they survive an apocalypse and describes the part they play in forming a new existence. I could say this story is about relationships; growing up; home; family; coming of age; self-knowledge; loyalty; right and wrong; endurance; war; globalisation; big business; yuppies; the little guy; the big guy; friendship; love; pig-powered electricity generators; ninjas and fun.
It is all these things, and more. There are parts of this story where I saw layer upon layer of meaning. There was the straight story being told; there was the parallel with the gulf wars; there was the parallel with the war on Terror; there was the parallel with big business taking over the world; there was the parallel with the global economic crash and recession; there was the parallel with the individual struggling with personal trauma and loss. I could go on. Of course, Nick Harkaway would simply say, "What have you been smoking? I just wrote a story." I don't know how much of what I found in the novel was put there deliberately, and how much is due to my imagination, but I do know that Nick Harkaway has created a wonderful reading experience that is thought provoking, humorous, and just a wonderful read. Some reviewers have said it can be a tough read. I would say it's not so much a tough read, as a fast paced tale that covers a lot of ground and doesn't let you rest for a minute. It ducks and weaves across various threads of story and doesn't waste a single element in its whole telling. I will be getting and reading Nick's next book as soon as it is available; and hey, it's got elephants.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
