Absence
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 5 May 2026
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- HUF6,290.00
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- Pre-Order
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- HUF6,290.00
Publisher Description
In this gripping, moving, and genre-blending speculative debut, the world is unraveling from an epidemic of human vanishing. Two rookie agents from the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs are dispatched to small-town Kansas to investigate a woman who claims to have returned from Spontaneous Human Absence, offering answers that could change everything.
People are “popping.” Disappearing, one by one, into thin air. A global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish.
Harvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalog the crisis. Harvey’s job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine—until his life is shaken by an unexpected assignment from the central office.
A woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she’s been to the other side and back. But is her wild and irresistible account true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for it? Together with his no-BS partner, Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out.
A resonant portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson’s debut is a vividly imagined novel of cosmic proportions, examining life in a time of exception and the stories we tell to get by.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hudson (Our Shared Storm) gives a skillful metaphysical twist to a tale of apocalyptic horror in this strikingly original novel. Its setting is a near-future America devastated by "popping," a phenomenon that sees individuals unexpectedly vanish from existence, their sudden disappearance punctuated by a vacuum pop. Harvey Ellis and Shonda Erins, secretly lovers and both agents in the Kansas Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, spend their days documenting these incidents of "Spontaneous Human Absence" and issuing remainder benefit checks to loved ones left behind. They're dispatched to rural Dawnville to investigate the case of Gabby Reyes, who popped as a teenager 10 years earlier and has now miraculously returned with a fantastical account of her post-pop existence. Shonda suspects Gabby is a fraud but Harvey, who lost his fiancée and parents in a mass "clusterpop" years earlier, clings to a shred of hope that those who have popped are not gone forever, setting the stage for an investigation that will harshly test the beliefs of both characters. The thoroughness with which Hudson imagines how individuals and society would have to rewire themselves to contend with this bizarre phenomenon lends his tale impressive philosophical heft. The result is a poignant exploration of loss, grief, hope, and the fragility of existence that will resonate with readers beyond the fantasy and horror genres.
