Dead Water

‘A Scheherazade of a novel, executed with scope, daring, and humour.
The Weight of Numbers
is unerringly well written, and engrossing to the last page.’
Lionel Shriver, author of
We Need to Talk About Kevin

‘Captivating… a shimmering tapestry, a truly networked work of fiction… In the corner of the literary landscape in which a few of us sit, hunting for ways to work ever exciting and dynamic thinking from the sciences into the contemporary novel,
The Weight of Numbers
is extremely good news. It’s a dynamic, innovative, and compelling book that brings into focus some of the most interesting trends in contemporary fiction, and Simon Ings deserves more than a sniff of at least one prize for his efforts.’
Daily Telegraph

‘And so it goes on, this rolling story, with its dazzling, admirable narrative nerve, travelling through space and time, across continents and generations… In Ings’s world we all become different people, less than the sum of our parts… A novel of explosions, of historical chain reactions… A new heart of darkness… It is unlikely there will be a finer written fiction this year.’
Guardian

‘The scale of Ings’s ambition is proportionally matched by the precision of his prose. Every sentence, image and line of dialogue is balanced and true. It isn’t its clever design or technical achievement that makes it compelling so much as its beating human heart.’
Independent on Sunday

‘Ings weaves an ingenious, shimmering web of contiguity and chance… A feat of meticulous plotting… Ings’s project is not dissimilar from David Mitchell’s
Cloud Atlas
, with which it has been compared.’
New Statesman
‘An ambitious, exciting novel… Ings’s prose can ascend into theoretical, visionary territory, but is rooted in the mess of human experience. A sudden sexual encounter in a bombed-out London library, an anorexic slicing a muffin in a Florida restaurant, a horror show of violence in Mozambique – these are unforgettable scenes, evoked with a lean, immediate physicality. The thrill of its unfolding connections pulls you inexorably to the end, and – if you’re like me – straight back to the beginning, to pick up your pencil and try the sums all over again.’
The Times

‘Ings displays great technical mastery in the construction of this novel… His ability to recreate history is keenly expressed… This novel triumphs, thanks to Ings’s discipline and quite fierce powers of imagination.’
Sunday Business Post

‘A virtuoso display of imaginative plotting.’
Financial Times

‘This stunning, gutsy novel takes a single incident and traces back its causes through the life stories of those involved. Dozens of deftly drawn characters, an acute understanding of geopolitics, an epic historical sweep and a serious talent for storytelling make this one of the most exciting – and relevant – books of the last year. Booker material, for sure.’
Arena

‘Like Don DeLillo’s
Underworld
, Simon Ings’s remarkable new work delivers nothing less than a secret key, a counterhistory, of the last sixty years. Ings’s fiction is vivid and swift, a thing of scenes and people, smugglers and astronauts, spies and revolutionaries. But beyond the topical excitements lies something even grander – a vision of our culture as a death ship.
The Weight of Numbers
is amazing.’
Mark Costello, author of
Big If