Books

The Deluge: Complex chronicle of climate breakdown peppered with black humour and humanity

At close to 900 pages,

Steve Markley: the author’s weighty novel The Deluge falls into the the rapidly emerging field of climate fiction

How exactly do you set about telling the biggest story of them all, one almost nobody even wants to talk about and which has no happy ending? This conundrum has engaged a growing number of writers in the rapidly emerging field of climate fiction.

Yet, at first glance, the scenario is all too familiar. After all, hasn’t Hollywood’s conveyor belt of blockbuster disaster movies already inured us to the end of the planet?

Oddly, the ...