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2008. The California desert. A four-year-old boy disappears in the wilderness and his parents find themselves at the centre of a media witch-hunt. A British rock star hides out at a run-down motel. A teenage Iraqi refugee lives a surreal life as a role-player in a military simulation. The present is connected to the past. The earth is connected to the sky. These stories connect with others - an eighteenth-century Franciscan explorer; a Mormon miner who can hear the silver singing in the rocks; a guilt-ridden aircraft engineer trying to contact Venus. Behind them all is Coyote, the trickster, who subverts the laws of Gods and men. A compulsively readable journey into the twists and turns of a handful of human lives, Gods Without Men is also a heartfelt exploration of our search for pattern and meaning in a random and chaotic universe. » Read the first pages of Gods Without Men by downloading the Penguin Taster here ‘Complex, disturbing. Kunzru takes pains with historical accuracy, writes beautifully constructed sentences’ - Annie Proulx, Financial Times ‘A beautifully written echo chamber of a novel’ - David Mitchell ‘Rather extraordinary, smart, innovative, a revelation. Has the counterculture feel of a late-1960s US campus hit – something by Vonnegut or Pynchon or Wolfe. Genuinely interesting and exhilarating . . . will appeal to fans of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Clever and extremely enjoyable’ - Guardian ‘One of the most socially observant and skilful novelists around. Consistently gripping and entertaining’ - Literary Review ‘Compulsively readable, skilfully orchestrated. Kunzru’s great American novel’ - Independent ‘Kunzru at his best . . . powerful, almost dizzying in scope’ - New Statesman ‘Funny, beautifully observed. Raises big questions about how far events and people, past and present, are connected. Surprisingly moving’ - Psychologies ‘One of our most important novelists. Never less than entertaining’ - Independent on Sunday ‘Richly detailed, electrically entertaining, a dark portrait of modern morals’ - GQ ‘Kunzru’s biggest, most ambitious and most engaging novel to date’ - The Times First time Schmidt saw the Pinnacles he knew it was the place.Three columns of rock shot up like the tentacles of some ancient creature, weathered feelers probing the sky. He ran a couple of tests, used the divining rods and the earth meter. Needle went off the scale. No question, there was power here, running along the fault line and up through the rocks: a natural antenna. The deal was done quickly. Eight hundred bucks to the old woman who owned the lot, some papers to sign at a law office in Victorville and it was his. Twenty-year lease, easy as pie. He couldn’t believe his luck. He bought a used Airstream off a lot in Barstow, towed it on to the site and sat for a whole afternoon in a lawn chair, admiring the way the aluminum trailer reflected the light. Took him back to the Pacific, the Superforts on their hardstands at North Field. The way those bombers glittered in the sun. There was a lesson in that dazzle, showed there were worlds a person couldn’t bear to look upon directly. He didn’t sleep at all the first night. Lying under a blanket on the ground, staring straight up, he kept his eyes open until the blacks turned purple, then gray, and the wool was frosted with little droplets of condensation like tiny diamonds. The desert smell of creosote and sage, the dome of stars. There was more action up in the sky than down on earth, but you had to drag yourself out of the city to know it. All those damn verticals cluttering your sightline, all the steel pipes and cables and so forth under your feet, jamming you up, interrupting the flows. People hadn’t fooled with the desert. It was land that let you alone. He thought he stood a good chance. He was still young enough to take on the physical work, unencumbered by wife or family. And he had faith. Without that he’d have given up long ago, back when he was still a kid reading mail-order tracts in his lunch-break, making his first tentative notes on the mysteries. Now he wanted no distractions. He didn’t bother about the good opinion of the folks in town. He was polite, passed the time of day when he went to pick up supplies at the store, but didn’t trouble himself further. Most men were fools; he’d found that out on Guam. Sons of bitches never would let him be, giving him nicknames, making childish jokes at his expense. Took all he had not to do what was on his mind, but after Lizzie he didn’t have the right, so he’d tamped down his anger and got on with fighting the war. Those saps had flown lord knew how many missions and with all those hours logged, all that chance to see, they still thought the real world was down on the ground, in the chow-line, between the legs of the pin-up girls they pasted over their rancid cots. Only person he met with a lick of sense was that Irish bombardier, what was his name, Mulligan or Flanagan, some Irish name, who told him of the lights he’d spotted when they were on their way to drop a load over Nagoya, green dots moving too fast to be Zeroes. Asked to borrow a book. Schmidt lent it to him, never did get it back. Kid went down with the rest of his crew a week later, ditched into the sea.
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