Solaris buys Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn

A press release from Michael Molcher of Solaris Books:hutchinson

A fractured Europe, a cook-turned-spy, a mighty web of espionage – but what happens when conspiracy threatens to overwhelm even reality itself?

 

Solaris is pleased to announce is has acquired Europe in Autumn by author and journalist Dave Hutchinson. The dystopian SF espionage thriller will be published in February 2014.

 

Rudi is a cook in a Kraków restaurant, but when his boss asks Rudi to help a cousin escape from the country he’s trapped in, a new career – part spy-part people-smuggler – begins. 

 

Following multiple economic crises and a devastating flu pandemic, Europe has fractured into myriad tiny countries, duchies, polities and republics. Recruited by the shadowy organisation Les Coureurs des Bois, Rudi is schooled in espionage, but when a training mission to The Line, a sovereign nation consisting of a trans-Europe railway line, goes wrong, he is arrested, beaten and Coureur Central must attempt a rescue.

 

With so many nations to work in, and identities to assume, Rudi is kept busy travelling across Europe. But when he is sent to smuggle someone out of Berlin and finds a severed head inside a locker instead, a conspiracy begins to wind itself around him.

 

With kidnapping, double-crosses and a map that constantly re-draws itself, Rudi begins to realise that underneath his daily round of plot and counter plot, behind the conflicting territories, another entirely different reality might be pulling the strings…

 

Editor-in-chief of Solaris, Jonathan Oliver, said: “Dave Hutchinson’s novel bowled me over with its brilliance from the first chapter. It’s an extraordinary alternative history of a near-future Europe laced with a Kafka-esque nightmare and written with all the cool-assuredness of a John le Carré. An incredibly original and insightful work of speculative fiction.”

About the author: Dave Hutchinson was born in Sheffield in 1960. After reading American Studies at the University of Nottingham, he became a journalist. He’s the author of five collections of short stories and one novel, and his novella “The Push” was shortlisted for the 2010 BSFA award for short fiction. He has also edited two anthologies and co-edited a third. His short story ‘The Incredible Exploding Man’ featured in the first Solaris Rising anthology, and appeared in the 29th Year’s Best Science Fiction collection. He lives in north London with his wife and several cats.

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