The Wandering Earth

How it reads

The Wandering Earth is science fiction (hard science fiction, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in an international setting, in the future, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are survival, nature and power and politics. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is left open, for you to argue about. At 45 pages it's a single-sitting book. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.