Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back

　　氣候劇變、病毒肆虐、同盟國在戰後一一瓦解，走到哪都看到一些以世界末日為笑點的笑話，像是什麼預兆一樣。這可以說是最糟糕的時代了。

　　根本不應該有人活在這種沒有未來的絕望時代，更別說養兒育女，讓孩子們在這種動盪中掙扎求生。雨過天晴，但這樣的時代過後，等待著我們的，又會是什麼呢？世界毀滅，幾乎近在眼前，怎麼都沒人出來做點什麼呢？

　　2018英國科普推廣代表組織Wellcome Book Prize得主馬克．奧康內爾，原本就對現存的世界充滿種種疑慮，而在撫育兩位年幼的孩子後，他更感到這些問題的迫切性，於是，他遍足全球，以求解答。

　　他尋訪世界各地的「末日準備者」，走訪美國南達科他州的地堡、億萬富翁的避難天堂紐西蘭，他探索欲遠走火星的殖民者及右翼陰謀家，他也回顧那些「未來」已然到來的地方，例如車諾比。他不畏艱難，就為了見證未來世界的可能樣貌。也因此，他終於為自己的問題找到了解答，也為讀者們開展了未曾想像的全新視野。

　　這部帶有幽默感、充滿洞見與探索精神的作品，為人們此刻的焦慮，帶來意想不到的希望。(文/博客來編譯)

　　"Insightful, affecting, funny, and appropriately terrifying.” —Sally Rooney
　　"Harrowing, tender-hearted, and funny as hell." —Jenny Offill

　　By the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine, an absorbing, deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with the future

　　We're alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. A viral pandemic has the power to draw our global community to a halt.  Old postwar alliances are crumbling. Everywhere you look there's an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What does it mean to have children—nothing if not an act of hope—in such unsettled times? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on Earth is anybody doing about it?

　　Dublin-based writer Mark O'Connell is consumed by these questions—and, as the father of two young children himself, he finds them increasingly urgent. In Notes from an Apocalypse, he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization's collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to those places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited—real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. In doing so, he comes to a resolution, while offering readers a unique window into our contemporary imagination.

　　Both investigative and deeply personal, Notes from an Apocalypse is an affecting, humorous, and surprisingly hopeful meditation on our present moment. With insight, humanity, and wit, O'Connell leaves you to wonder: What if the end of the world isn't the end of the world?

MARK O’CONNELL is the author of To Be a Machine, which was awarded the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and short-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Slate, and The Guardian. He lives in Dublin with his family.