End of Nightwork

About this book

Pol suffers from a very rare hormonal disorder that ages him erratically; when he was thirteen his body aged ten years overnight and now in his early thirties he still has the outward appearance of a twenty-three-year-old. But with his condition dormant Pol and his wife Caroline manage to live an ordinary life in Kilburn. Theyre happy enough even if having a young child has put something of a strain on their marriage. That and Pols obsessive interest in the writings of an obscure seventeenth-century Puritan prophet Bartholomew Playfere and his premonitions of ecological disaster and the end of the world. But while Pol is failing to complete his research on Playfere he encounters a radical new movement that argues that all economic and political events are part of an aeon-long struggle between the old and the young that the hoarist habit of violence their need to conquer has also affected how they treat the planet. The leader of this popular movement predicts an imminent inter-generational conflict father against son mother against daughter that echoes Playferes own prophecies. Against this increasingly fraught backdrop Pols dormant condition threatens to resurface putting both the safety and happiness of his family at risk.