Albatross

“Sometimes, you wake up and immediately sense that something’s not quite right. You don’t know how you know; you just do. It’s as certain as the sunlight shining through the window.”

The sounds of the war with the North have echoed through Abel’s life ever since he can remember. But this morning, he wakes to silence. After walking downstairs, he is surprised to find his mother is a deer and his dad is a dog. The same fate has befallen everyone else, it seems. There are no people left. And while Abel can still talk to his parents that morning, they become wilder and wilder as the day draws on. Noticing that all of his neighbours have turned into animals, too, Abel chooses to run away from the dangerous beasts that now consider him prey.

As he attempts to locate another human, he enters a supermarket and finds a letter. But can he trust what it says? He manages to connect with Kat, a fifteen-year-old girl from the North. Bound together by the same lot, the pair of sworn enemies head to the coast in search of answers. This gruelling journey sees them not only fight against the outside world, but against each other’s preconceptions.

Throughout, Yorick Goldewijk keeps the reader firmly in suspense: why have only these two souls been spared? What has happened exactly? And what does it mean to be human?

“I have felt hate in every fibre in my body. Hate is something that animals DEFINITELY do not experience. But I don’t want to end on a negative note. So here’s a quick sum for you (I don’t give a damn if it doesn’t make any sense): if you deduct all hate from all love, you’ll always have something left over. Those leftovers are us. That’s what I think.”

• Amazing, original and full-of-intrigue book for readers aged 12+

• Critically acclaimed by the media

• Yorick Goldewijk won the Gouden Griffel award

• Goldewijk’s book Movies Showing Nowhere was named The Times Children’s Book of the Year