The new CBC Massey Lectures -- the most prestigious and eagerly anticipated lectures series of the year -- are being delivered in 2010 by international bestselling author Douglas Coupland. Coupland's 2010 Massey Lecture is a real-time, five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster. Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcock blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious voice known as Player One. Slowly, each reveals the truth about themselves while the world as they know it comes to an end. In the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and J. G. Ballard, Coupland explores the modern crises of time, human identity, society, religion, and the afterlife. The book asks as many questions as it answers, and readers will leave the story with no doubt that we are in a new phase of existence as a species -- and that there is no turning back. DOUGLAS COUPLAND is the international bestselling author of Generation X, and eleven other novels, including The Gum Thief, Hey Nostradamus!, All Families Are Psychotic, and Generation A, which was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His nonfiction books include Marshall McLuhan, Polaroids from the Dead, Terry: The Life of Terry Fox, and Souvenir of Canada. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages and published in many countries around the world. He is also a visual artist and sculptor, furniture designer and screenwriter. He lives in Vancouver, B.C. --- from the publisher |
