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Your next favorite book
is waiting.
by Ian MacKenzie
"I often traveled for work." So begins Nothing On Earth, a propulsive novel that tells the story of Anna Hendrix, an American spy, as she seeks answers for the appearance of a mysterious and potentially powerful metal of unknown origin.
For a long time, Anna was in counterterrorism, but now she is on a new mission, one which has friends and enemies across the globe scrambling to find answers. Her pursuit will take her from the Horn of Africa to Southeast Asia—through expatriate enclaves and the NGO communities in which she cultivates her cover and extracts information from a wide cast of characters: aid workers, diplomats, foreign correspondents, energy magnates, insurgents, dissidents, and of course, other spies.
As the pressure mounts to find the original source of the metal, Anna must make choices with life-changing implications not just for herself, but for the people with whom she deals, always bearing in mind the young daughter waiting for her back home. In Nothing on Earth, novelist Ian MacKenzie reimagines a pivotal decade in the Pax Americana, from the killing of Osama bin Laden to the storming of the Capitol. Anna's voice—lean, understated, unflappable—is our companion and guide through the dark topography of geopolitical power, and in the end, the furthest reaches of human comprehension.
For fans of Rachel Cusk and John Le Carré alike, this is a story of power and secrecy, geopolitics and science, parenthood and loss, and the question of how we know what we think we know, how we make sense of our existence on Earth.
"The result is a gripping, complex slow burn featuring plenty of old-school tradecraft that will appeal to fans of John le Carré, Graham Greene, and Dan Fesperman." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An elegant, existential thriller, rich in modern spycraft — a Great Game for our Silicon Age, with a meditation on futility and loss at its heart." —Deepti Kapoor, author of Age of Vice
"I could not stop reading. Every chapter of this book leaves you wanting more of MacKenzie's spare and beautiful prose, his ability to see the idiosyncratic interiors of people and to capture in fiction the things we care about, and his mischievous take on the worlds we think we know. This is a book for our time." —Uzodinma Iweala, author of Beasts of No Nation and Speak No Evil
This information about Nothing on Earth was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ian MacKenzie is the author of the novels Nothing on Earth, Feast Days, and City of Strangers. He was born and raised in Massachusetts and has lived in Ethiopia, Myanmar, Brazil, and New York City. He now lives in Mozambique with his wife and daughter.
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