Description

Mia Holl lives in a state governed by The Method, where good health is the highest duty of the citizen. Everyone must submit medical data and sleep records to the authorities on a monthly basis, and regular exercise is mandatory.

Mia is young and beautiful, a successful scientist who is outwardly obedient but with an intellect that marks her as subversive. Convinced that her brother has been wrongfully convicted of a terrible crime, Mia comes up against the full force of a regime determined to control every aspect of its citizens’ lives.

Publisher Review

"This is a brilliant, disturbing and wildly imaginative picture of the nanny state run mad; how far should the State be allowed to poke its nose into a citizen's business?" -- Kate Saunders * Times * "Zeh seems to have won every European literary prize going...Three years since its first publication in German (it is translated here with tremendous gusto by Sally-Ann Spencer), Zeh's novel is even more relevant to our over-structure, over-quantified times." -- Simon Ings * Guardian * "An impressively plausible account of a conformist society disguised as a utopia" -- Lucy Popescu * Independent * "In Sally-Ann Spencer's superb translation from German, Juli Zeh's novel gives form to a dystopia that remains hauntingly recognizable" -- Charlotte Ryland * Times Literary Supplement * "Thoughtful and intelligent...her main character Mia is an intellectual heroine as much as a physical rebel." -- Lesley McDowell * Sunday Herald *