Player One [Hardcover]

`A work of genius.' --Independent on Sunday

`A tense, utterly compelling story.' --The Times

`Enjoyable ... The way Coupland moulds his fiction from the throwaway debris of North American popular culture is quite brilliant ... Coupland has always been a highly compassionate writer, concerned mainly with the ways in which affluent people's lives are cheapened by popular culture.' --Scarlett Thomas, Guardian

`As always with Coupland, the ideas come thick and fast, they're quirky, often funny and frequently profound.' --Daily Mail

`As an observer with a knack of coining memorable phrases he is as sharp as ever ... Coupland's gift from comedy is evident in the combination of bathos and farce ... Shows Coupland as a first-rate thinker on what technology in its present form does, and might do, to consciousness, identity and individuality.' --Times Literary Supplement

From the bestselling author of Jpod, Generation X and Generation A comes a dystopian Breakfast Club for the twenty-first century.

A real-time five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster. Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcock blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious voice known as Player One. Slowly, each reveals the truth about themselves while the world as they know it comes to an end.

In the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and J. G. Ballard, Coupland explores the modern crises of time, human identity, society, religion and the afterlife. The book asks as many questions as it answers and readers will leave the story with no doubt that we are in a new phase of existence as a species - and that there is no turning back.

DOUGLAS COUPLAND is the author of the international bestseller JPOD and twelve other novels including the era-defining GENERATION X and, most recently, GENERATION A. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages. He is also a visual artist and sculptor, furniture designer and screenwriter. He lives and works in Vancouver.