People pass the word only to those they trust most: Adjustment Day is coming. They’ve been reading a mysterious book and memorising its directives. They are ready for the reckoning.

Adjustment Day, the author’s first novel in four years, is an ingeniously comic tale in which Chuck Palahniuk does what he does best: skewer the absurdities in our society. Smug, geriatric politicians edge to the brink of a third World War in an effort to control the burgeoning population of young males; working-class men dream of burying the elites; and professors propound theories that offer students only the bleakest future.

Into this dyspeptic time a blue-black book is launched carrying such wisdom as:

The weak want you to forego your destiny just as they’ve shirked theirs.

A smile is your best bulletproof vest.

When Adjustment Day arrives, it inescapably spawns the logical conclusion of every separatist fantasy, alternative fact and conspiracy theory out there.