Everything Feels Like the End of the World

By: Else Fitzgerald

Narrated by: Anna Hruby, Jamie Oxenbould

Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

Grief, loss, pain, love and the future—an achingly human debut short story collection, from the winner of the 2019 Richell Prize.

Everything Feels Like the End of the World is a collection of short speculative fiction exploring possible futures from an Australia not so different from our present day to one thousands of years into an unrecognisable future.

At the heart of each story is the anchor of what it means to be human: grief, loss, pain and love. A young woman is faced with a terrible choice about her pregnancy in a community ravaged by doubt. An engineer working on a solar shield protecting the Earth shares memories of their lover with an AI companion. Two archivists must decide what is worth saving when the world is flooded by rising sea levels. In a heavily policed state that preferences the human and punishes the different, a mother gives herself up to save her transgenic child.

These transformative stories are both epic and granular, and forever astonishing in their imaginative detail, sense of revelation and emotional connection. They herald the arrival of a stunning new voice.

©2022 Else Fitzgerald (P)2022 Allen & Unwin Pty Limited

Critic reviews

"Thrilling, prescient, and deeply moving...an electrifying new voice in Australian fiction." (Emily Bitto)

"Clear eyes, sharp intellect and deep sorrow—both lament and protest song." (Kate Mildenhall)

"An exquisite elegy for the world we know, and the world we know is to come...delicate, precise and heartbreaking." (Briohny Doyle)