California

The sunshine state lies in darkness.

Los Angeles is in ruins, left to the angels now.

And the world Cal and Frida have always known is gone.

Cal and Frida have left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realise this community poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.

A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent,California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

“Stunning and brilliant novel, which is a wholly original take on the post-apocalypse genre, an end-of-the-world we've never seen before and yet is uncomfortably believable and recognizable. By turns funny and heartbreaking, scary and tender, beautifully written and compulsively page-turning, this is a book that will haunt me, and that I'll be thankful to return to in the years to come. It left me speechless. Read it, and prepare yourself”

In her arresting debut novel, Edan Lepucki conjures a lush, intricate, deeling disturbing vision of the future, then masterfully exploits its dramatic possibilities - Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad

Imaginative, inventive and beautifully written, California is both a shocking and engrossing read - Rosamund Lupton, author of Sister

This bestselling debut, with shades of 1984 and The Road thrusts an ordinary American couple into a frightening future.. . . powerful and creepy . . . Lepucki has given expression to a generational anxiety about the near future, one rooted in the threat of environmental crisis and the loss of meaningful cultural institutions (including the printed book). The experience of reading California brings validation to anyone who sits upright in the middle of the night struck with the instability of the human project on this planet: others are awake, too. And a lot of us are reading California. - Amity Gaige, Guardian

Edan Lepucki is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and is a staff writer for the influential blog The Millions. Her work has already appeared in publications including McSweeny's, LA Times Magazine and Best American Short Stories 2012.

The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, Cal and Frida build a tentative existence for themselves in the wilderness. But everything is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant. Unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded community with dark secrets that offers security, but also poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust. Praise for California 'Imaginative, inventive and beautifully written, California is both a shocking and engrossing read' Rosamund Lupton 'This bestselling debut, with shades of 1984 and The Road thrusts an ordinary American couple into a frightening future . . . The experience of reading California brings validation to anyone who sits upright in the middle of the night struck with the instability of the human project on this planet: others are awake, too. And a lot of us are reading California ' Amity Gaige, Guardian ' What makes Lepucki's vision so unsettling is its total plausibility' Patrick Flanery, Times Literary Supplement

The sunshine state lies in darkness.Los Angeles is in ruins, left to the angels now.And the world Cal and Frida have always known is gone.Cal and Frida have left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant. Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realise this community poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

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