In the Beginning
When Tara Farrier returns to the UK after a long spell as an aid worker in war-torn Yemen, she’s hoping for a well-deserved rest.
But a cultural battleground has emerged while she’s been away, and she’s unprepared for the sensitivities of her new colleagues at an international thinktank.
A throwaway reference to volcanic activity millions of years ago gets her into hot water and she discovers she belongs to the group reviled by fashionable activists as ‘Young Earth Rejecting Fascists’, or ‘Yerfs’. Faster than she can say ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex’, she is at the centre of a gruelling legal drama.
In the keenly awaited follow-up to his acclaimed The End of the World is Flat, Simon Edge stabs once again at modern crank beliefs and herd behaviour with stiletto-sharp satire.
‘Completely absurd yet painfully accurate. Brilliantly parodies a fiasco that already seems beyond parody’
Victoria Smith, author of Hags
‘Hilarious, horrifying and deliciously perverse – In the Beginning captures the modern world and shines a bright light at its imperfections’
Christina Dalcher, author of Vox
‘Brilliant! Totally gripping, perfectly capturing both the absurdity and horror of this madness. I laughed out loud lots and I got quite emotional – with both anger and joy’
Gareth Roberts, author of Gay Shame
‘Simon Edge is Britain’s leading exponent of Horatian satire. Yes, he likes his characters, but also sees through them – and us, his readers – with pellucid insight’
Helen Dale
‘The world is not beyond satire. I know this thanks to Simon Edge’
Jonathan Kay, Quillette
What [Mr Bryan] wants is that his ideas, his interpretations and beliefs should be made mandatory. When Mr Darrow talks of bigotry he talks of that. Bigotry seeks to make opinions and beliefs mandatory
Chicago Tribune on the Scopes Monkey Trial, 17 July 1925