After a nasty fight with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes defiantly leaves home. He doesn't want to run away, he just wants to prove that he is no longer a child, but during his absence, a serious tragedy befalls his family, which will affect Holly's whole life, her loved ones...
...and for those you don't even know yet. A Cambridge university student who will stop at nothing for wealth; a restless journalist who vacillates between family and war coverage; an embittered writer drifting further and further away from success - Holly's fate emerges through the prism of their lives. As time passes and life ticks by, the existence of a mystical group is revealed, and a lifetime's worth of visions and coincidences make sense in a surreal, invisible war on the edge of our world.

David Mitchell, the author of Cloud Atlas, has once again created an epic story that spans ages and continents, which is at the same time a novel of fate, a metaphysical thriller and a meditation on mortality and survival.