Read our sample translation of The Light Years

About the book

During a sweltering heatwave, a couple in their early thirties receives a hermit crab in a mysterious post package. Not long before, a friend announced that she is expecting, which reawakens old grief in both of them.

They live in a claustrophobic world where the rich have left for the cooler north and drones maintain public order. Despite the stifling heat, they go on bike rides with their friends, host lavish, alcohol-fuelled parties and philosophize about how different everything could have been, about time travel, investments in outer space, and the colonization of other planets.

Meanwhile, the couple’s almost obsessive search for the crab’s origins takes them to mouldy cellars, online self-help forums, virtual realities and parched forests. They also return to their old neighbourhood, where, just a stone’s throw from an old coal mine, they dream about what the future could look like.