On the surface, this novel is a warming and inspiring tale of friendship and travel set in a crumbling world. At a deeper level, it is an indictment levelled at modern day humanity for its failure to protect the earth, and itself, from its own ravages.

A formative experience in Africa opens the eyes of Joss Douglas to the programme-like method by which he plans and lives his life. Years later, in a world in which global civilization is faltering, with a climate that grows harsher and wilder with each passing year, he no longer sees the sense in this ordered existence, and feels that he is working towards nothing. With his girlfriend Tina, who has distant roots in Brazil, he steps out of his conventional programme and they set off on a voyage of discovery to South America.

While they are away, rioting, disorder and state crackdowns at home leave them with the sensation that it is their home no longer. Feeling adrift, they must decide where they will subsequently take their lives. They are joined by their friends and this diverse band of misfits, a generation in microcosm, acquire a Kombi van and journey throughout the South American continent, searching for a place where they can ride out the tempestuous circumstances. It is a trip that will take them to Patagonia, the high Andes of Bolivia and the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and on which they must learn to break free of the rules by which they have lived all their lives. Ready to take on their future, they travel at all times with irreverent and irrepressible humour, a healthy disrespect for authority and a well-preserved sense of wonder.

For wanderers and wonderers: this is a book that explores the question of what to do and where to go when the warm embrace of civilization, and the comfort of a future that is certain, begin to fall apart.