The Opposite of a Person
By Lieke Marsman

If people were evil, and I wished to be good, then I had to make sure that I was the opposite of a person.When Ida, a Dutch climatologist, accepts an internship at a climate research institute in the Italian Alps, it means leaving her girlfriend Robin behind in Amsterdam. As she and her new colleagues prepare to demolish a decommissioned hydropower dam, Ida finds herself grappling with love, loneliness and her place in a society unwilling to confront global warming.An unflinchingly honest narrative of vulnerability, longing and introspection is disrupted by essays and poems, creating an incisive, witty and devastatingly smart portrait of how we live now. Distilling all our contemporary fears, Marsman examines what we must face head-on if we - individuals, humanity, the world - are to survive. And she asks us: if we are to survive, what is our impetus? For what are we fighting?Startlingly unique, timely and ultimately deeply moving,and The Opposite of a Personand is a dazzling, cerebral tour-de-force, a poignant love story and an urgent, unforgettable call to arms. Gorgeous . . . stunning . . .and An existentialist, essential story about the world we live in, which explores the complex role and place of us humans in it.' --Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, author of the International Booker Prize-winningand The Discomfort of Evening Swirling, stirring, surprising,and The Opposite of a Personand channels its forked curiosity into asking not only how a person should be, what a society should do, but also what a book can and should accomplish. A novel for the end-times, in the best possible way.' --Polly Barton, author ofand Fifty Sounds The experience of readingand The Opposite of a Personand isand like walking on shifting ground. It's unnerving, dynamic, almighty in its force. I was consumed by this book.' --Saba Sams, author ofand Send Nudes Relentlessly inventive . . . Wry, spirited, troubling andand a marker of an intriguing new talent.' --Irish Times A fizzing tale of heartbreak and climate disasterand . . . inventive, and excellent . . . bask in its fizzing multiplicity: the narrative is interspliced with poems and script-like dialogue, and stippled with quotes from Kierkegaard, Leopardi and Naomi Klein.' --Daily Telegraph It feels in a sense likeand the most modern book you could readand . . . Marsman writes powerfully on natural as well as man-made disasters. The essays spliced through the fiction are complex and rewarding and, like the narrative, address the question of belonging, reflecting, for example, on the limits of identity politics.' --Observer An extraordinary andand gripping novel of ideas.' --NRC Handelsblad A surprisingly playful novel . . . Every page is engaging.' --De Groene Amsterdammer