The Ministry for the Future

The Ministry for the Future (2020) opens with a catastrophic wet-bulb heatwave in India that kills eight million people in a matter of days, an event that haunts the rest of the novel. The story follows Mary Murphy, an Irish diplomat who heads the Ministry for the Future, a body established under the Paris Agreement to represent the interests of future generations, and Frank May, an American aid worker who survives the heatwave and cannot move past it. Robinson structures the novel as a mosaic of perspectives, voices, and documentary fragments, ranging from climate refugees to central bankers to anonymous perpetrators of eco-terrorism, building a portrait of a world trying to respond to catastrophe through institutions designed for a different era.

Signed copy. Signed by Robinson on specially bound-in page by the publisher.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, boards. New York: Orbit, 2020. ISBN: 9780316591690. #10562.
Fine in fine dust jacket.