For August we move from the arid salt flats of J.G. Ballard's imagination to the frozen tundra of Siberia in Marcel Theroux's recent novel, Far North.

Out on the far northern border of a failed state, a lone survivor, Makepeace, patrols the ruins of a dying city. Into this cold, isolated world walks the evidence that life is flourishing elsewhere -- a refugee from the vast emptiness of forest, an individual whose very existence inspires Makepeace to take to the road to reconnect with human society.

What Makepeace finds is a world that is unravelling -- stockaded villages enforcing a rough and uncertain justice, mysterious slave camps laboring to harness the little understood technologies of a vanished civilization. But Makepeace’s journey also leads to unexpected human contact, tenderness and the dark secrets behind this frozen world. Far North is a quest through an unforgettable Arctic landscape, from humanity’s origins to its likely end.