The End We Start From

Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for May 2018

Brave and unflinching, The End We Start From is a powerful vision of the future that is utterly unforgettable.

When I was a child I thought I had been chosen for our times. The ending times. The creeping times.

In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z.

Days later, the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.

This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family's world - of new life and new hope - sings with love.

Startlingly beautiful, written in honed and sparing prose, The End We Start From has captured Waterstones bookseller’s imaginations with its haunting depiction of a broken world just a hair’s breadth from our own. Visually unforgettable, the book’s film rights have already been sold to Benedict Cumberbatch's production company, SunnyMarch. Both a staggering dystopian vision and a fiercely honest portrayal of love’s capacity to endure, it marks the emergence of a striking new talent. .