Quarantine

It's ten years since a deadly pandemic swept the globe, and five years since the last new recorded case.

Society came close to collapse, but a vaccine was found in time, and life is slowly getting back to normal. But while a vaccine was found, a cure wasn't. Lukas is one of the last people to contract the disease, and he waits, quarantined, in a camp in the mountains of central Asia. With nothing to do, and no future to speak of, the inmates are imprisoned, yet free to do whatever they want: some create cults; some retreat into themselves; some have sex with whoever they can.

In New York, Rebecca is a scientist who worked on the vaccine. Having lost her partner in the years of chaos, she is obsessed with trying to prevent something similar happening in future, and spends her days trying to engineer ways the virus might evade the vaccine. When she succeeds, she realises she needs people who still have the disease - and there's only one place she can goto find them.

Intelligent, gripping and human, Quarantine is a novel about how we - as individuals, and as a society - deal with the aftermath of catastrophe.

'Holdstock stealthily explores the ways in which we react to circumstances of extreme pressure' - Claire Allfree, The Daily Mail

'One of the most thought-provoking and arresting novels of the year' - Scots Whay Hae!

‘Arresting … It’s a novel which will make you think … An immediate and immersive read, and it has a humanity and honesty at its core, which portrays hope, even in the darkest times … Sensitive and sensual’ - Alistair Braidwood, Snack Magazine

Nick Holdstock is a China expert who now lives in Edinburgh. As well as three non-fiction books on China, including two on Xinjiang, he has written for the Guardian, n+1, the LRB, the TLS and elsewhere.

What would you do if you knew you were going to die? It's ten years since a deadly pandemic swept the globe, and five years since the last new recorded case. Society came close to collapse, but a vaccine was found in time, and life is slowly getting back to normal. But while a vaccine was found, a cure wasn't. Lukas is one of the last people to contract the disease, and he waits, quarantined, in a camp in the mountains of central Asia. With nothing to do, and no future to speak of, the inmates are imprisoned, yet free to do whatever they want: some create cults; some retreat into themselves; some have sex with whoever they can. In New York, Rebecca is a scientist who worked on the vaccine. Having lost her partner in the years of chaos, she is obsessed with trying to prevent something similar happening in future, and spends her days trying to engineer ways the virus might evade the vaccine. When she succeeds, she realises she needs people who still have the disease - and there's only one place she can goto find them. Intelligent, gripping and human, Quarantine is a novel about how we - as individuals, and as a society - deal with the aftermath of catastrophe.

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