AustLit

The Nostradamus Kid is a semi-autobiographical account of the early life of Bob Ellis. Protagonist Ken Elkin is a young, over-sexed, and hyperactive youth with a taste for personal melodrama. While attending an annual Seventh Day Adventist camp in 1956, he is led to believe that the end of the world is imminent and fears that his true love for the pastor's daughter will never be consummated. But the world doesn't end. Some six years later, he arrives in Sydney to attend university. While his religion has receded, Elkin's waywardly obsessive sexuality and belief in the apocalypse come to a head with the advent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The much-anticipated apocalypse is once again postponed, however.