The Gone-Away World.

Harkaway, Nick (author).

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In a postapocalyptic world—made so by a weapon whose evil-genius creator didn’t quite think through the complications of actually using it—a man makes a journey of self-discovery that is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Though the earth and its atmosphere have been savaged beyond imagining, a pipe girdles the globe, dispensing chemical salvation and creating a narrow “Livable Zone.” In the book’s breakneck, bravura beginning, the pipe is on fire, and our hero and his friends, a roughneck gang of former soldiers, are the only ones who can put it out. A flashback, half the book long, introduces the hero’s lifelong friendship with the wildly charismatic Gonzo Lubitsch, their education and intellectual development, and their roles in the Go Away War. They get the fire out, but their relationship is severed, providing the impetus for the book’s surprising second half. This first novel is writing of the first order, with forehead-smacking takes on international relations (“Now that this place exists as a war zone, everyone feels it would be rude not to use it”), the military mind-set (with its “saving grace of hierarchy”), and government by corporation (the massive cooperative effort that saves the ruined world is quickly co-opted by the cost-benefit crowd). But at the heart of The Gone-Away World is a meditation on the very nature of what makes us human. Funny, digressive, dark, and possibly optimistic, Harkaway’s debut displays ingredients of Catch-22, Dr. Strangelove, and The Road Warrior—with maybe a pinch of Pynchon and a sprinkling of Vonnegut. But for all that, it’s its own heady brew.