'One of the best writers of fiction currently at work in English' Robert Macfarlane 'Is M. John Harrison the best writer at work today? He's certainly among the deftest and most original' Olivia Laing, Guardian It feels like the end. Government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures, Europe has been yet the exact cause of the catastrophe remains obscure. Is it an alien invasion? An ecological collapse? Or an unprompted change in the nature of reality? Phillip Tennent makes a living selling exotic lifeforms washed up from the Channel - until he lands a creature whose shapeshifting properties threaten to destabilise everything he thinks he knows. M. John Harrison, acknowledged master of science fiction, unsettles and entertains in this slyly satirical adventure into the limits of human knowledge and mastery.