Water in the Desert, Fire in the Night (Gethan Dick)

This book will ship from Monday, 9 June.

‘Original and lyrical … unlike anything I’ve read in recent memory’
— Johny Pitts, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Open Book

‘Its originality lies in the appeal of the narrative voice, one of millennial diffidence that is still somehow salted with optimism’
— Erica Wagner, The Guardian

‘Ambitious, inventive and stirring debut novel’
— Niamh Donnelly, Irish Times

‘brilliant and daring debut … this is a novel of planetary catastrophe like no other, eschewing the hackneyed clichés of the genre’
— Eoghan Smith, Irish Examiner

‘The first-person narration is smart and tight, and the humour is
razor-sharp … Gethan Dick is a writer worthy of our time’
— Anne Griffin, Irish Independent

‘Vast, generous, funny, resistant and alive’
— Valérie Manteau, novelist and winner of the Prix Renaudot

The thing about the end of the world is that it happens all the time.
Someone leaves and it’s the end of the world.
Someone comes back and it’s the end of the world.

Here is a novel about hope, wolves, companionship and resilience, hunger and gold. It’s about an underachieving millennial, a retired midwife and a charismatic Dubliner who set out from London after the end of the world to cycle to a sanctuary in the southern Alps.

It’s about packing light and choosing the right companions and trousers: what’s worth knowing, what’s worth living, and holding on to your sense of humour in moments big and small.

It’s about the fact that the world ends all the time. It’s about what to do next.

Gethan Dick was born in 1980 in Belfast and grew up in the West of Ireland. She moved to London for an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College. She then studied at Camberwell College of Art and shifted her creative practice towards text-based and co-created visual art. She moved to Marseille, France, where she has lived since 2011, working as one half of visual-arts duo gethan&myles with her partner, Myles Quin. They have two children, and in her spare time she swims, cycles, jumps off rocks into the sea or heads for the hills.

 was born in 1980 in Belfast and grew up in the West of Ireland. She moved to London for an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College. She then studied at Camberwell College of Art and shifted her creative practice towards text-based and co-created visual art. She moved to Marseille, France, where she has lived since 2011, working as one half of visual-arts duo gethan&myles with her partner, Myles Quin. They have two children, and in her spare time she swims, cycles, jumps off rocks into the sea or heads for the hills.