In the summer of 1959, an Antiguan immigrant in north-west London lives the last day of his life.

A mother looks back on her early forays into matters of the human heart, considering the destructive nature of desire.

A disgraced cop stands amid the broken shards of his life, unable to move forward into a future that holds no place for him.

A teenager chases spectres through virtual reality, trailed by a little girl with a runny nose and no surviving family.

We all take a much-needed break from this mess, on a package holiday where the pool's electric blue is endless, while political and environmental collapse happen far away to someone else.

Zadie Smith presents a sharply alert and slyly prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.