The Paper Eater
This title welcomes us to the island paradise where utopianism and human greed are set to collide – with catastrophic results. The whole world is beginning to fall in love with Atlantica. Miles from anywhere, the man-made island is a true twenty-first century vision. With a thriving economy based on global waste disposal and an infrastructure run by advanced software, politician-free Atlantica is the envy of other nations and a consumer paradise. But, even Utopia has its outcasts. Meet Harvey Kidd, petty criminal, papier mache craftsman, forlorn lover and holder of an explosive secret. Is the system about to discover that it spat out its most difficult customer too soon?
“Jensen is becoming one of our best writers, sometimes surreal, sometimes down to earth, always with a great and embracing human sympathy’ Fay Weldon
‘Sharp, funny and richly imagined, this is as timely a warning about rampant consumerism as Orwell’s 1984 was about state control’ Sunday Express
‘This consumer-obsessed, pseudo-Utopian society, with its Waste Pledges and Festival of Choice, is so close to Blair’s Britain that it hurts…An exuberant fable that is a million miles from the current slew of relationship novels. Liz Jensen has more invention and wit in her little finger than all of their creators put together’ Independent
‘A sardonic, free-wheeling take on a possible consumerist future…Bitingly funny, sometimes unsettling, and sometimes surprisingly touching’ Sunday Times
‘Liz Jensen is a true original, beholden to nobody. The Paper Eater is a fururistic satire on consumerism and deliciously funny’ Deborah Moggach, Independent, Books of the Year
“In The Paper Eater Jensen gives us a razor-sharp, witty, funny, terrifying, moving and page-turning satire that keeps its beat to the countdown of the electric chair. Through Harvey and Hannah she shows us that if you unplug a blockage, anything can happen. The Paper Eater reveals what happens when you mix up liberty with consumerism, happiness with worldly goods, how easily we are seduced by charisma, how weak and how greedy, how dark and scared we are. It is also a love story, about hope, about kindness and how you can beat the system just by being human. Like all good tales that create worlds of the future or the past, it reveals everything about what it is to live, here and now.” Kirkus UK
‘It fairly fizzes with energy…a truly exhilarating, invogorating read’ Margaret Forster
‘Uncowed by female literary tradition, moved by high intelligence, sharp, funny, funky, prophetic.’ Fay Weldon
