And what an intriguing and impressive first novel it is. (I call it a novel, though it consists of nine interlinked stories, comparable to Douglas Coupland’s Life After God, 1994, and, to an extent, Victor Kelleher’s Parkland Series, 1994–96.) Amsterdam takes the well-worn premise of the post-millennial apocalypse and reworks it, creating a dystopia of catastrophic climate change, drug addiction, viral epidemics, alternative relationships and bureaucratic wrangling. It is a familiar world.

The stories vary in quality, but only two miss the mark (‘The Theft That Got Me Here’ and ‘The Forest From the Trees’). ‘What We Now Know’ is a strong introduction, narrated by an astute and peculiar boy, reminiscent of M.J. Hyland’s John Egan, who will grow into the older narrator of subsequent stories. ‘Dry Land’ is the standout: Amsterdam depicts a wet, gloomy atmosphere in the bush, where a derelict house is inhabited by a macabre mother and daughter, bleak relics from a forgotten time. ‘Cakewalk’, similarly exceptional, deals with the infection and nebulous illness, abjectly described: ‘He’s on all fours, throwing up blood under the tree. Such a pastoral scene, I’d like to paint it – the pale late afternoon sky, the dried green of the trees, the little man bent over like a dog ...’

The novel’s strength lies in the gaps between and within the stories; the weighty silences and teasing untolds. For some readers this may frustrate. But Things We Didn’t See Coming is the perfect combination of uncanny landscapes, existential anxiety and social critique.