Termush (Faber Editions): 'A classic―stunning, dangerous, darkly beautiful' (Jeff VanderMeer)

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Within twenty-four hours of our return to the hotel everyone has been busy—or has made himself busy—with the arrangement of the furniture, comparing pictures and the position of the various rooms. As VanderMeer says in the introduction, it does feel like somewhere between other, cosier 20th century 'after the disaster' type dystopias and J.G. Ballard type dystopias in which people turn on each other and morality and capitalism are thrown into the spotlight. Termush doesn't let you forget that the narrator and the other residents are wealthy and paid to be survivors, and some of them care mostly about maintaining this status of privilege against other survivors who want to be let in. It is easy to see how this questions the mindset of the wealthy even without a presumably nuclear disaster, and how systems are designed to allow people to keep themselves privileged over others' need. Another significant struggle I faced was its disjointed structure. Each sentence felt like a standalone clause, devoid of any connection or flow. There was no coherent story holding everything together, leaving me adrift in a sea of disconnected words. It almost felt like a collection of random sentences that didn't complement each other in any meaningful way. I found it increasingly challenging to engage with the book.

Your support changes lives. Find out how you can help us help more people by signing up for a subscription Introduced by Jeff VanderMeer, welcome to a luxury hotel at the end of the world in this post-apocalyptic 1967 dystopia … Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months… it was here if anywhere that the first significant event had taken place – on this balcony where he now squatted beside a fire of telephone directories, eating the roast hind quarter of an Alsatian before setting off to his lecture at the medical school.Secrets! Secrets! My wife buys plenty of her own books — and as they are contemporary fiction they all tend to be more than mine. So she doesn’t say anything about my habit. Together with other residents, they decide to leave. The “remote and watchful” Maria is silent as she follows the narrator on to the yacht. As they sail away, they see the hotel gardens full of people and the stone figures gleaming in the sun as the land slips from view. The passengers sleep, and wake up to be served with coffee and rolls. Barely moving, they lie about with eyes half closed. “Outside the sea is still. There is no darkness and no light.” Considering Termush was first published over half a century ago, it feels timeless, and has strong contemporary resonances with the 21st-century world. Exceptional writing. Faber & Faber was founded nearly a century ago, in 1929. Read about our long publishing history in a decade-by-decade account. Termush is a luxury coastal resort, created as a safe-haven for the wealthy to live out their days following a nuclear apocalypse. But the further into their living there they get, they begin to see that not everything is quite as they thought they paid for.

And doesn’t this look great? Who doesn’t want to feel secure at a luxury resort, with reserves of fresh water, free from radiation and boredom? The protagonist reports odd occurrences and has strange dreams. What is causing these hallucinations? Ella, Faber’s resident mole and heritage editor, wanted to position this book as a ‘cult classic’. She provided some enticing comp titles and keywords to get the ball rolling: ‘eerie, prophetic, minimalist, poetic, dreamlike, uncanny, alienated, existential’ – what more could you want!? We were called down to the lounge early in the morning. The message came over the hotel’s loudspeaker system, which evidently works so that it can broadcast this type of command even when the individual loudspeakers are switched off. When I use the word “command” I am not trying to suggest any feeling of opposition on my part, but I do find that this arrangement discriminates against the individual guest. And yet I have my doubts about this; the system may be essential for us all, it is merely the use of it in this instance that I object to. After a nuclear apocalypse the wealthy inhabitants of a hotel exit their underground bunker and begin to live their new normal lives in the hotel. However, their problems are only just beginning when survivors of the nuclear disaster begin to turn up at the hotel and tensions begin to run high between those who want to allow them to stay and those who wish to remain isolated.

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Despite weathering a nuclear apocalypse, their problems are only just beginning. Soon, the Management begins censoring news; disruptive guests are sedated; initial generosity towards Strangers ceases as fears of contamination and limited resources grow. But as the numbers - and desperation - of external survivors increase, they must decide what it means to forge a new moral code at the end (or beginning?) of the world … See Faber authors in conversation and hear readings from their work at Faber Members events, literary festivals and at book shops across the UK. This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.To support our work buy a copy! Outside the sun has been shining through a thin layer of cloud, but there has been no sign of rain, which, according to the radiation experts, ought to reassure us. R.F. Kuang, Sue Lynn Tan, Rebecca Ross, Kate Heartfield, N.E. Davenport, Saara El-Arifi, Juno Dawson and Sunyi Dean

Nuclear war has devastated the environment but a small group of the wealthy and elite were prepared for this possibility, so now they’re cocooned at Termush, a large hotel resort on the edge of the Atlantic. One of them chronicles their experiences as he tries to make sense of what’s happening around him. A former academic he attempts to rationalise events but finds his thoughts and feelings are not so easily contained. If the hotel management see themselves as a protective shield between the guests and the outside world, whenever that world is revealed as menacing, they are acting in direct contradiction of their terms of reference. To be a guarantee of help in a situation which may well turn out to be total chaos, according to the unhelpful wording of the brochure, does not mean that to conceal the true facts becomes a duty. Originally published by Faber in 1967, welcome to a luxury hotel at the end of the world in this post-apocalyptic dystopian novella. With a new foreword by Jeff VanderMeer,

A few years ago, Holm’s vision of life after a nuclear holocaust may have seemed dated. It is less so now, when the use of nuclear weapons is again a realistic possibility. In Termush, however, nuclear conflagration is a metaphor for a subtler change. The true theme is not the prospect of a mass dying-off, but an inner mutation that is already under way. Faber Members have access to live and online events, special editions and book promotions, and articles and quizzes through our weekly e-newsletter. Welcome to Termush. Termush is a luxury coastal resort like no other. Find out more about what we have to offer, from gourmet dining to our in-house reconnaissance team.

I tried illustrating some of the new designs, but I was missing the sense of making the invisible visible from the earlier rounds.The sun strikes a glitter from the surface of the sea and the light affects her outline like an unstable acid, threatening to obliterate it . . .’