Thirst

'A terrifying thriller ... Visceral' - Entertainment Weekly'An emergency from its very first sentence ... A literary thriller that summons the survivalist terror of The Road' - Patrick Somerville, author of This Bright River WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF THE WATER RAN DRY?On a searing summer evening, Eddie Chapman has been stuck in a traffic jam for hours. There are accidents along the highway, but ambulances and police are conspicuously absent. When he decides to abandon his carand run home, he sees that the trees have been burned and the water in the stream bed is gone. Something is very wrong.When he arrives home, there is a power cut and no running water. The pipes everywhere, it seems, are dry. Eddie and his wife, Laura, find themselves thrust together with their neighbours while a sense of unease thickens in the stifling night air.Thirst takes place in the immediate aftermath of a mysterious disaster – the Chapmans and their community suffer the effects of the heat, their thirst and the terrifying realisation that no one is coming to help. As violence rips through the community, Eddie and Laura are forced to recall secrets from their past and question their present humanity. In crisp and convincing prose, Benjamin Warner compels readers to do the same.'A timely, necessary, character-driven meditation on morality, society, and responsibility. Thirst presses us, accuses and implicates us in the failures of its characters' - Chicago Review of Books

A terrifying thriller ... Visceral, A timely, necessary, character-driven meditation on morality, society, and responsibility. Thirst presses us, accuses and implicates us in the failures of its characters, A tense, prescient journey into a collective environmental nightmare — one that’s not very hard to imagine actually happening. This book tapped into fears I didn’t know I had. Warner has given us a worthy, shocking, and poetic debut, Thirst mirrors the deep anxiety so many feel about modern life: that its complexity makes it fragile and that we're all living on the edge of disaster, A gripping parable of love and survival as well as a harrowing exploration of our darkest selves. Thrilling and thought-provoking, and dazzling in scope, Benjamin Warner's debut is a surprising, profound portrait of desperation and humanity — and who we are when we are stripped down to our most basic needs

Benjamin Warner teaches creative writing at Towson University. He holds an MFA from Cornell University. Thirst is his first novel. He lives in Baltimore, USA.benjaminwarner.net@RealBenWarner