Strange Labour

About this book

"With this brilliant debut Penner thoughtfully upends the tropes of postapocalyptic fiction" -- Publishers Weekly Strange Labour is a powerful meditation on the meaning of humanity in a universe that is indifferent to our extinction and a provocative re-imagining of many of the tropes and clichs that have shaped the post-apocalyptic novel. Most people have deserted the cities and towns to work themselves to death in the construction of monumental earthworks. The only adults unaffected by this mysterious obsession are a dwindling population that live in the margins of a new society they cannot understand. Isolated in an increasingly deserted landscape living off the material remnants of the old order trapped in antiquated habits and assumptions they struggle to construct a meaningful life for themselves. Miranda a young woman who travels across what had once been the West meets Dave who has peculiar theories about the apocalypse.