Nick Harkaway - The Gone-Away World

“The Found Thousand,” Zaher Bey says.

The world we knew is gone for good this time. The new one is beautiful and dangerous. It is us. I sit with Elisabeth and Zaher Bey and watch the stars come out overhead.

“Are you ready?” the Bey asks.

Elisabeth breathes out onto my cheek. We both answer him at once.

“Yes.”

Authoring may be solitary, but this author at least cannot function in a vacuum. The first person I must thank, now and ever, is Clare. I started this book in January 2006 while we were planning our wedding; the deal was done in 2007 on the day we moved house—which meant that Clare moved house and I went to meetings where everyone was nice to me. Without her keen eye and her laughter, this book would make less sense and be less funny and I would be a very lonely fellow.

I have, as is customary, borrowed from (read “pillaged”) every story I have ever loved to write my own, but I must bow especially to P. G. Wodehouse, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and to Alexandre Dumas. It’s not what they did, but how they did it.

In the forest of the booktrade, I am guided by the inestimable Patrick Walsh, without whom I would be eaten by bears. Jason Arthur at William Heinemann and Edward Kastenmeier at Knopf rein in my more incomprehensible moments and gently but firmly insist that I get the thing done right. All those involved in designing, setting, presenting and selling the book have pushed the boat out in wonderful and bizarre ways, which makes the whole thing even more exciting than it already is.

Over the years, I have received from my parents—by osmosis, as it were—a master class in writing and surviving the novel; this in addition to the whole business of how to be a person.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Great Title Hunt. Good titles are rarer than snarks and twice as slippery as Gussie Fink-Nottle’s newts.

Lastly, I have stolen bits and pieces of real people to make my characters, and I have put them together to work the action without thought for where they came from. There simply is not one portrait of a real person in this book—although, if you look carefully, you may find your own nose above someone else’s moustache. To all those anonymous donors, thank you.

Well, now. On to the next one.

Nick Harkaway

London, 2008

Nick Harkaway was born in Cornwall in 1972. He studied philosophy, sociology and politics at Clare College, Cambridge, and then worked in the film industry. The Gone-Away World is his first novel. He lives in London with his wife.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2008 by Nick Harkaway

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain by William Heinemann, a division of Random House Group Ltd., London.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Harkaway, Nick.

The gone-away world / by Nick Harkaway.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-27037-5

1. Title.

PS3608.A7425G66 2008

813’.6—dc22 2008008701

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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