Un enquêteur urbain est chargé par une entreprise mondiale de découvrir comment les villes du monde entier sont englouties et détruites par les friches qui apparaissent mystérieusement en leur centre. Ces terrains vagues génèrent des bouleversements et un effondrement technologique catastrophique dans toutes les mégapoles du monde...
The investigator travels to five cities worldwide—Tokyo, Tangier, Los Angeles, Berlin, and a dangerous "unidentifiable megalopolis"—and is helped in each city by a guide who enables him to infiltrate his way into its wasteland, where he encounters its inhabitants as they attempt to generate new existences in those outlandish zones. He transits determining urban sites for the future of the wastelands, such as the Los Angeles River and Tokyo's image-screened edifices. Many of the unruly figures he encounters intend to elude the cities' turmoil altogether by heading for the "true north," which may or may not exist. Others tell him, "Only the wastelands can save us now."
During each of these investigations, he discovers a volatile oscillation is taking place between the megalopolis and the wasteland, but in every location, it's the wasteland that is seizing the upper hand to overwhelm its adjacent city. Towards his assignment's end, at the summit of a tower in Berlin, the investigator meets the secretive figure who has commissioned his work and attempts to uncover that figure's motivations in manipulating the wastelands. The world's cities are becoming apocalyptic, experiencing ecocide. The investigator will have to travel himself to the "true north" to escape that endpoint.
Écrivain, romancier et professeur britannique, enseignant à la Kingston University de Londres, Stephen Barber est l'auteur de plus de 30 livres, dont plusieurs romans, la plupart traduits dans plusieurs langues.
