Zero K

Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties. His younger wife, Artis Martineau, is in failing health. Ross is the main investor in a remote, secret compound where death is carefully controlled and bodies are preserved until future biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to life.

Jeff travels to the compound to join Ross and Artis and to say an uncertain farewell to her as she gives up her body. Ross feels a deep need to pass into another dimension and wake in a new world. For his son, that wish is indefensible.

The questions at the centre are whether anyone should have to die the way they were born, without choosing it, and whether refusing a certain fate is a human glory. Jeff narrates in the first person. He is committed to living, and to the astonishments of ordinary life on earth.

This is a literary novel of ideas, set against a world of terrorism, floods, fires, famine and plague. It weighs that darkness against love, awe and the everyday experience of being alive. The tone is reflective and mysterious, with the pull of the story coming from a father and son who disagree about death.