In the dystopian, autocratic country of East Australia, the government controls all internet and media, borders have been closed, and a drug called ‘F’ proliferates – a drug that allegedly allows users to see into the future. Outside East Australia, time seems to be misbehaving – a football game is played out exactly the same as one twenty years beforehand, kick by kick, and extreme coincidences are happening more and more frequently.

Amid all of this, our main character, Julian, just wants to make music with his band and get high. Following the breakout success of the band’s debut album, the pressure is on for a second platinum disc. However, the lead singer, Ash, keeps creating the kind of political music that the East Australia government is determined to censor.

Jordan Prosser examines the workings of censorship and propaganda within pop music, as the band tours East Australia. The music scene is eerily familiar, built into Australia’s real cultural geography. We follow along from North Fitzroy to Adelaide’s Thebby Theatre, from the state of ‘New Victoria’ to the state of ‘Wakefield’: Prosser’s text weaves the familiar with the unfamiliar, leaving me unsure as to where our Australia ends and his dystopia begins.

If the fabric of the book is un/familiarity, then the fabric of the world Prosser builds is time. When people can see the future on a whim, what happens to the thin line between future and present? Does the prophesied future happen because it is destined, or because characters are following a script that they have foreseen? Interweaving the themes of music, anti-fascism, addiction and time, this book left me absolutely reeling, and absolutely enamoured. Books like this are not only the reason I read Australian fiction, but also the reason I read at all.