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A novel about fear of the future?and the future of fear
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
April 2013
On Sale: April 2, 2013
320 pages ISBN: 0374224242 EAN: 9780374224240 Kindle: B00ANI9EMO Hardcover / e-Book
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New York City, the near future: Mitchell Zukor, a gifted young mathematician, is hired by a mysterious new financial consulting firm, FutureWorld. The business operates out of an empty office in the Empire State Building; Mitchell is employee number two. He is asked to calculate worst-case scenarios in the most intricate detail, and his schemes are sold to corporations to indemnify them against any future disasters. This is the cutting edge of corporate irresponsibility, and business is booming. As Mitchell immerses himself in the mathematics of catastropheโecological collapse, war games, natural disastersโhe becomes obsessed by a cultureโs fears. Yet he also loses touch with his last connection to reality: Elsa Bruner, a friend with her own apocalyptic secret, who has started a commune in Maine. Then, just as Mitchellโs predictions reach a nightmarish crescendo, an actual worst-case scenario overtakes Manhattan. Mitchell realizes he is uniquely prepared to profit. But at what cost? At once an all-too-plausible literary thriller, an unexpected love story, and a philosophically searching inquiry into the nature of fear, Nathaniel Richโs Odds Against Tomorrow poses the ultimate questions of imagination and civilization. The future is not quite what it used to be.
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