COUPLAND’S latest novel is gently apocalyptic. Set in a dystopia where bees have finally become extinct, and global warming is taking its toll, society is gradually dissolving. It’s a dismal vision.

Yet in this world of lingering decline there are five people who have miraculously been stung by bees.

These characters become vehicles for Coupland’s thoughts, as he fiddles, in his characteristically inventive style, with the tangled wires which power modern society.

Generation A is another fantastic example of Coupland’s satirical writing which takes consumerism, popculture and technology and whips it up into a literary frenzy.

Sarah O’Meara