TOMORROW

Life, the universe, and everything

- Jonathan Wright

RELEASED OUT NOW!

294 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Chris Beckett Publisher Corvus

After a “period of not writing at all”, notes Chris Beckett in his acknowledgments, his first draft of Tomorrow was completed in six weeks. He began work during the lockdown, and it shows. There’s a fever-dream quality to a book about a would-be author who wants to write a novel that encompasses everything.

Within a few pages, it’s clear this plan has taken an unexpected turn as, in a narrative that jumps across time and space, we see our author in captivity, caged by guerrillas. It’s not conducive to writing a metaphysical masterpiece – although when is it ever the right time to craft such a book? As Beckett’s protagonist notes during happier days, spent in splendid isolation in a remote cabin by a river, “If you have a choice between writing a novel and being a character in a novel, you’ve got to choose the latter, haven’t you?”