The Emergency cover art

The Emergency

Pre-order free with Premium Plus
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Emergency

By: George Packer
Narrated by: Billie Fulford-Brown
Pre-order free with Premium Plus

Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Pre-order for $39.99

Pre-order for $39.99

About this listen

A gripping fable of imperial collapse that illuminates the crises of our times.

An empire has collapsed from boredom and loss of faith in itself. In the Emergency that follows, youth rebellions of urban Burghers and rural Yeomen embrace radical new ideas of humanity.

Doctor Hugo Rustin, chief surgeon at the Imperial College Hospital, is increasingly estranged from his city and his family - from his wife, Annabelle, who finds fulfillment in their changed community; and especially from his teenage daughter, Selva, who has turned against her father's values. When an incident at the hospital leads to Rustin's disgrace, he seeks redemption in a quixotic and dangerous journey into the countryside, with Selva as his companion, just as the conflict between Burghers and Yeomen is reaching a crisis.

The Emergency is a visionary novel of ideas and a taut page-turner that goes to the nerve center of what it mean to live in a time of fracture and upheaval. It asks what we owe one another across divided generations and classes, what common human bonds remain when a society falls apart. In creating a vividly imagined world, Packer takes us deep into the heart of our troubled moment.

Dystopian Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Political Science Fiction
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.