Stillicide

Science Focus, 1 of 10 Best Science Books of the Year (UK)

"As we are drip-fed more details, the stories pool together into a pellucid portrait of a broken world . . . Less a linear narrative than a layering of images, Stillicide is an exercise in matching literary form to a visual idea: as Cynan Jones’s sparse, clear words accumulate down the page, we are left feeling the chill of a slowly melting iceberg." —Clare Saxby, The Times Literary Supplement

"Fragmented, marvellously compressed . . . The radical distillation of language, the sense that every word has been individually chosen, results in a blunt perfection that heightens this effect. Narrative exists, but it is secondary to form. On first encounter at least, the pleasures Stillicide offers appear to be more aesthetic than dramatic . . . With recent novels from Megan Hunter, Jenni Fagan, Richard Powers, Ben Smith, John Lanchester and Ghosh himself working hard to imagine the effects of climate crisis at both the global and the personal level, Stillicide can be added to the growing roster of powerful and urgent meditations on the future. As a tract of written language, it is close to perfect. As a repository for ideas, it is imaginative and far reaching. As a story of and for our times, it is very human, and deadly serious." —Nina Allen, The Guardian