AustLit

'The contemporary literary imagination more and more figures the future as a place where quality of life is worse than it is now. Environmental catastrophe, climate change and now pandemics feature in the scaffolding we use to predict what the world beyond us will be like.' (Introduction)

'Patrick Allington’s second novel, Rise & Shine, drops us headfirst into a future in the wake of an ecological catastrophe that claimed the lives of more than eight billion people. The survivors reside in the city-states of Rise and Shine, which are constantly at war with each other, and the bloody footage is broadcast to the populace’s “autoscreens” as the sole source of nourishment. These graphic images of human suffering keep the residents alive as they obsess over the gory details and the military heroes featured.' (Introduction)

'‘What is the use of saying, “Peace, Peace” when there is no peace below the diaphragm?’ asks Chinese writer Lin Yutang in The Importance of Living (1937). The subject of food and its manifestations – sustenance, communion, gluttony, longing – has claimed a place in the books of every era and genre, from heavenly manna in the Book of Exodus to starving gladiators in Suzanne Collins’s multi-billion-dollar The Hunger Games franchise. Writers as varied as Marcel Proust and Margaret Atwood have prioritised this theme in their work.' (Introduction)