A Line You Have Traced

By: Roisin Dunnett

Reminiscent of Cloud Atlas, this gorgeous speculative novel asks the question: How do we live meaningful lives if we believe the future will be worse than the present?

Against a backdrop of growing violence and environmental collapse, three women living centuries apart each search for meaning and connection after becoming obsessed with a mysterious red book. 

In post–World War I London, Bea encounters an uncanny figure she believes is an angel as the life she is building in the Jewish East End is threatened by fascists. In contemporary East London’s underground queer scene, Kay parties with her friends while imagining herself visited by time travelers. And years in the future, Ess—part of a collective preparing for the end of human life on earth—prepares to make a journey into the past to possibly help save the present.

Roisin Dunnett’s brilliant debut A Line You Have Traced asks what we owe to those who will come after us, and what it might cost us.