Matt Haig

The Humans


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      Matt Haig is the number one bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and six highly acclaimed novels for adults, including How to Stop Time and The Radleys. As a writer for children and young adults he has won the Blue Peter Book Award, the Smarties Book Prize and been nominated three times for the Carnegie Medal. His work has been published in over forty languages. @matthaig1 matthaig.com

      Published in Great Britain in 2013 by

      Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

       canongate.co.uk

      This digital edition first published in 2013 by Canongate Books

      Copyright © Matt Haig, 2013

      The moral right of the author has been asserted

      Quotation taken from interview with J. G. Ballard, © 2003, J. G. Ballard, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd.

      Lyrics from ‘This Must Be The Place’ by David Byrne courtesy Index Music Inc.

      Extract from ‘That it will never come again’ by Emily Dickinson reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Bellknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

      Michael Franti quotation reproduced by kind permission of Guerilla Management Collective.

      Extract from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace reproduced by kind permission of the Hill Nadell Literary Agency.

      Extract from The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (Random House) reproduced by permission of David Higham Associates.

      Extract from Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd © 2004 Marcus du Sautoy.

      Extract from Contact by Carl Sagan copyright © 1985 Druyan-Sagan Associates, Inc. formerly known as Carl Sagan Productions, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Druyan-Sagan Associates, Inc. This material cannot be further circulated without written permission of Druyan-Sagan Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

       British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

      ISBN 978 1 78689 466 3

      eISBN 978 0 85786 877 0

      Typeset in Minion by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd,

      Falkirk, Stirlingshire

      To Andrea, Lucas and Pearl

      I have just got a new theory of eternity.

      – Albert Einstein

       Contents

       Preface

       (An illogical hope in the face of overwhelming adversity)

       PART I

       I took my power in my hand

       The man I was not

       Detached nouns and other early trials for the language-learner

       Texaco

       Corpus Christi

       Human clothes

       Questions

       Coffee

       Mad people

       The cubic root of 912,673

       Dead cows

       The world as will and representation

       Amnesia

       4 Campion Row

       The war and money show

       A stranger

       Starting the sequence

       Primes

       A moment of sheer terror

       The distribution of prime numbers

       Glory

       Dark matter

       Emily Dickinson

       Dishwasher

       A large house

       Daniel Russell

       The pain

       Egypt

       Where we are from

       The dog and the music