In the Absence of Heroes

2014 Longlist

A clever, moving novel about the impact of the internet on our relationships.
Jim and Renata Delpe’s life is in a very modern crisis. With their son, Jeff, sending text messages to his dead brother while slipping quickly into internet addiction, and with Renata engaged in a secret internet relationship with a figure she has never actually met, Jim Delpe – who has long had ‘a love-hate relationship’ with computers – is left with no choice but to log-in himself, if the family is to be saved.
In this ambitious, suspenseful and achingly human novel, set against the decline of the nuclear family and the unstoppable rise of digital relationships, In the Absence of Heroes gives us the complex modern world, full of hard, binary choices: make one or two bad choices in a row and just see what happens . . .
This is the sequel to Death Of A Superhero, now made into a movie, starring Andy Serkis and Thomas Brodie-Sangster.

(From Publisher)

About the Author

Anthony McCarten’s novels have been translated into 14 languages. His collection of short stories, A Modest Apocalypse, was shortlisted in the Heinemann-Reed Fiction Award in 1991. Death Of A Superhero won the 2008 Austrian Youth Literature Prize and was a finalist for the German Youth Literature Prize. He has published five novels to date and also written numberous stage plays, including co-writing the world-wide success Ladies Night, which won the prestigious Molière prize, the Meilleure Pièce Comique in 2001. While most of his novels have been turned into successful feature films by other film makers, McCarten directed Show of Hands himself, as well as his adaption of his stage-play, Via Satellite.