The Flood

President Bliss is handling a tricky situation with customary brio, but after months of ceaseless rain the city is sinking under the floods. The rich are safe on high ground, but the poor are getting damper in their packed tower blocks, and the fanatical ‘Last Days’ sect is recruiting thousands.

When at last the sun breaks through the clouds Lottie heads off to the opera, husband Harold listens to jazz and their ditsy teenage daughter Lola fights capitalism by bunking off school. Shirley takes her twin boys to the zoo. The Government – eager to distract attention from a foreign war it has waged – announces a spectacular City Gala. But not even TV astrologer Davey Lucas can predict the extraordinary climax that ensues.

Maggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’ in 1983. Since then she has published eight novels to great acclaim, including Grace, The Ice People, Light Years and The White Family which was shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the International Impac Dublin Literary Award 2004. She is the first woman Chair of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.