Pol, the narrator of Aidan Cottrell-Boyce’s debut novel, suffers random ‘heterochronous’ shocks, in which his body suddenly and traumatically jerks forward in age. The first of these took place when he was only twelve years old. Anticipation of another looms over Pol’s marriage, the birth of his son and his work on a book about a fictional 17th-century prophet, Bartholomew Playfere, whose writings predicted a second great flood. Pol struggles with married life, teachers become concerned for his son and the book is repeatedly put off. And then, of course, comes the next shock.

The End of Nightwork braids the domestic with the political, showing both in a state of collapse: as Pol’s marriage slowly degrades, a radical organisation gathers momentum, looking to take power back for the world’s youth. While much of the novel is imbued with a sense of historical