We’re told that the future will be brighter. But what if human happiness really lies in the past?
Hobart, 2022: a city with a declining population, in the grip of a dark recession. A rusty ship sails into the harbor and begins to unload its cargo on the site of the once famous but now abandoned Gallery of Future Art, known to the world as GoFA.
One day the city’s residents are awoken by a high-pitched sound no one has heard for two generations: a factory whistle. GoFA’s owner, world-famous billionaire Dundas Faussett, is creating his most ambitious installation yet. He’s going to defeat technology’s dominance over our lives by establishing a new Year Zero: 1948. Those whose jobs have been destroyed by Amazon and Uber and Airbnb are invited to fight back in the only way that can possibly succeed: by living as if the internet had never been invented.
The hold of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, and their ilk starts to loosen as the revolutionary example of Factory 19 spreads. Can nostalgia really defeat the future? Can the little people win back the world? We are about to find out.
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“This engrossing, timely, and finely detailed first novel about the creation of a twentieth-century literary masterpiece is a must-read for lovers of history, literature, or politics.”
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Library Journal (starred review) on The Last Man in Europe