A Wrinkle In The Skin

When a series of catastrophic earthquakes tears apart the surface of the Earth, civilisation discovers that roads, governments, supermarkets and reliable postal services were all rather more fragile than generally advertised. Matthew Cotter survives on the island of Guernsey, but the familiar landscape has been violently transformed and the old social order has suffered the inconvenience of largely ceasing to exist.

In A Wrinkle in the Skin, John Christopher presents an unsettling vision of Britain after a geological catastrophe. Cotter sets out across the ruined country in search of his daughter, accompanied by a boy named Billy. Their journey carries them through a landscape made strange by destruction, where collapsed cities, altered coastlines and isolated groups of survivors have replaced the reassuring machinery of everyday life. Unfortunately, the removal of civilisation does not automatically improve human behaviour; it merely allows its less sociable varieties to operate without office hours.

Christopher is best known for The Tripods, but this is a darker and more adult work of post-apocalyptic fiction. There are no glamorous wasteland vehicles, attractively distressed leather costumes or convenient tins of food arranged for dramatic discovery. Survival is physical, exhausting and morally complicated, while companionship can be both essential and dangerous. The catastrophe may have been caused by the Earth, but people remain perfectly capable of making matters worse without geological assistance.

First published in 1965, the novel belongs to the distinguished British tradition of destroying civilisation in a calm, economical prose style. Christopher’s apocalypse is especially effective because it begins in recognisable surroundings and proceeds with grim practicality. The transformed terrain is vividly imagined, but the real tension lies in what happens when the assumptions governing ordinary life vanish and every stranger must be assessed as potential ally, burden or homicidal nuisance.

This 1979 Sphere edition is an excellent choice for readers of classic disaster fiction, post-apocalyptic novels and stories about long journeys undertaken under conditions considerably less comfortable than those promised by the travel industry. It is bleak, compelling and quietly philosophical, asking what remains of duty, affection and decency when the world has been physically folded, cracked and rearranged.

The copy is in Very Good condition, having survived the decades with remarkably little evidence of tectonic disturbance. Its structural integrity remains considerably better than that of the British Isles depicted inside. Sold by Crappy Old Books, where the end of civilisation is treated as no excuse for careless packaging.

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