Things We Didn't See Coming

A mesmerising debut set in a not-too-distant future, in a landscape at once utterly fantastic and strangely familiar.

A memorable debut...[and a] gleefully apocalyptic novel... as ever with this kind of dystopian fiction, there is a satisfying tingle in imagining an Armageddon just round the corner. But Amsterdam also gives his book an emotional heart

What makes Things We Didn't See Coming such an impressive novel - and very impressive debut - is the playfulness of the writing contrasted to the grimness of the subject matter

Rarely has the darkness of life been looked at with such buoyant irony, imaginative grace and disarming ardour. Read it once and then read it twice

A small marvel, overflowing with ideas. Scary, funny, shocking and touching by turns

Here's that rare thing - a post-apocalypse novel that's more than doom and gloom. A treat to read - playful, intelligent and intriguing

A novel that ditches traditional narrative drive in favour of nine separate episodes, each capable of standing alone as a short story... It might sound frustrating but somehow it works...he has got the emotional intelligence dead right

The familial tensions are wonderfully teased out, the menace of the gathering storm subtly implied, a moment of moral panic deftly judged... There is a much here that points to a bright future

Set in a future landscape both fantastic and strangely familiar, a beguiling narrator describes a world transformed by battles over resources, climate change and drug-resistant diseases. This is a novel rich in ideas and is alarmingly eschatological and sensitive to the certainty of human frailty, and love

Should please reader who enjoys Margaret Atwood's dystopias

Impressive debut novel...Amsterdam writes with tremendous assurance and his narrative teems with ideas, repeatedly twisting in unexpected directions. His disturbing but beguiling novel introduces a writer with a striking, original voice

Kennedy's sixth novel might move by turns through mystery, love story and comedy of shipboard manners, but its central subject is the transgressive, near-sexual pleasure of passing off fiction as fact

As impressively ingenious as a fairground house of mirrors ... dramatic, exciting and unpredictable... It sails through the Big Novel Test in that it stays in the mind long after it has been laid down. And there is a powerful magic in that

A complex, challenging novel... there's strong language throughout. At times the tone is chill and distancing but it edges gradually towards a final satisfying sense of empathy and resolution

Steven Amsterdam was born in New York and has worked as a map editor, producer's assistant, and a pastry chef. He has lived in Melbourne, Australia since 2003, where he works as a writer and palliative care nurse. His debut novel, Things We Didn't See Coming, won The Age Book of the Year in Australia and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

Opening on the eve of the millennium, when the world as we know it is still recognisable, we meet the nine-year-old narrator as he flees the city with his parents, just ahead of a Y2K breakdown. 
 
Next he is a teenager with a growing criminal record, taking his grandparents for a Sunday drive. In a world transformed by battles over resources, he teaches them how to steal. 
 
In time we see him struggle through strange, horrific and unexpectedly funny terrain as he goes about the no longer simple act of survival. Despite the chaos of his world, he keeps his eyes on the exit door, his heart open and his mind on what he thinks is going to happen next. 
 
Longlisted for the Guardian first book award.

Steven Amsterdam

A gem of a book…hugely entertaining and also quite moving

Amsterdam is consistently playful, witty and light of touch

A wonderful novel: imaginative, intelligent, empathetic...like a cross between The Corrections and The Slap

Brilliant, unexpected, wide-ranging and deeply moving, the story of one family's extraordinary - and sometimes otherworldly - negotiation of the very real hazards of life

Maile Meloy, author of 'Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It'

Every now and then, a novel arrives that conveys not only wisdom and understanding but also offers a dose of magic...a remarkable story, full of imagination and fun

A lovely book, one that manages to surprise, and that seduces you into believing absolutely in this magical world

'Okay, tell me which do you want: to be able to fly or to be invisible?' 
 
This question leads to thirty years of discoveries, extraordinary strengths and closely guarded secrets. 
 
'To tell you the narrative concens a family whose members have superpowers is only to graze the surface of a moving and beautifully realised meditation on what it is to be an ordinary human being' 
Australian 
 
'A wonderful novel: imaginative, intelligent, empathetic... Like a cross between The Corrections and The Slap' 
Sydney Morning Herald 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2012 ENCORE AWARD

Steven Amsterdam

Praise for What the Family Needed

A gem of a book…hugely entertaining and also quite moving

Enjoyable

Wry, deeply moving and literally magical

A gem of a book…hugely entertaining and also quite moving

Enjoyable

Wry, deeply moving and literally magical

A gem of a book…hugely entertaining and also quite moving

Enjoyable

Wry, deeply moving and literally magical

Books by Steven Amsterdam

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter