Anomaly

£12.99

New Year’s Eve. The last day of the last year of human existence.

A high-ranking minister criss-crosses the city with blood on his hands, a dying necrophile attempts to go clean before God, and a traumatized nurse is pressured into keeping a powerful secret. With undisguised glee, a nameless narrator unravels these twisted tales of moral turmoil, all of which are brought to an abrupt close by a cataclysmic collision of time and space. What will remain on New Year’s Day? In a cabin in the Alps, the last people on earth – a musicologist and her young daughter – search for a five-hundred-year-old musical score that might explain the catastrophe. Outside the cabin, hidden in shadow, a sinister figure waits for them to accept their fate.

With dark humour and remorselessness reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Anomaly is an exhilarating, provocative carnival of a novel, from one of Europe’s most distinctive literary voices.

New Scientist Best Science Fiction 2024

144pp, paperback with flaps, £12.99
ISBN 978-1-908670-89-2
Publication date: 16th April 2024

Press & Reviews

‘Anomaly evades understanding, and forgoes explanation in favour of something more mysterious and devious. Whether it makes you think of life and what you’re doing with yours, or what to make of death, or how a novel so slender can ask such crunchy questions about life, Nikolaidis prompts more questions than he cares to answer. That’s exactly why it’s so compelling.’ – Rory McNeill, Sunday Telegraph

‘A startlingly imaginative piece of work... Anomaly stands as an outstanding testament to a frustrating, tiresome and deadly truth.’ – Charlie Connelly, New European

‘If there is justice in the world, Nikolaidis' novel should become a bestseller bigger than the novels of James Patterson or John Grisham. And since there is no justice in the world, let us hope that a divine caprice will nonetheless make this insanely readable page-turner a mega success.’ – Slavoj Žižek

'Nikolaidis’ very literal rendition of the Book of Revelation is unflinching, darkly humorous, and relentless in its pursuit of the uncomfortable details we tend to suppress... a collaborative tour-de-force, and a must-read for anyone brave enough to face the “warts and all” truth.' – Sofija Popovska,Asymptote

'Anomaly is playful and extremely smart, with not one single word in excess. It’s one of the best books I have read in a while.’ – Senka Marić, author of Body Kintsugi

'He makes Samuel Beckett look positively cheery; yet the relentless pessimism has an oddly invigorating effect.' Independent

About The Book

Author

Andrej Nikolaidis (born 1974) is a Montenegrin-Bosnian novelist and journalist. An ardent anti-war activist and promoter of human rights, especially minority rights, Nikolaidis initially became known for his outspoken political views. His previous novels translated into English include The Coming, Till Kingdom Come and The Son, which was awarded the European Prize for Literature in 2011.

Translator

Will Firth was born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia. He studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb and Moscow. He lives in Berlin and works as a translator of literature and the humanities (from Russian, Macedonian and all variants of Serbo-Croatian, aka ‘BCMS’). His best-received translations of recent years have been Faruk Šehić’s Quiet Flows the Una and Tatjana Gromača’s Divine Child.