Touched
About This Book
Walter Mosley's speculative novel Touched follows Martin Just, who wakes one morning from a sleep that may have lasted for centuries. He carries two certainties he cannot account for: that humankind is a contagion bound to wipe out all that exists, and that he himself is the remedy. The story's cosmic, visionary premise unfolds across a book that moves between intergalactic menace and the close-knit life of one household.
Martin lives in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles with his wife and their two children, the only Black family on their residential block. As a father and husband he is ordinary, but he is also the Antibody and the Cure, and at times another consciousness takes over, granting him extraordinary strength to protect the people he loves. Hunting the household is Tor Waxman, a pale, white-haired personification of death who wears an elegant suit, walks with a cane, and aims to end all life with a deadly touch. Martin must persuade his family that the threat is real and draw them into a conflict of almost unimaginable scale.
Mosley moves easily between the grand and the mundane: enormous clashes with stakes that reach across the universe, tense confrontations with neighborhood police patrols, and intimate, unhurried conversations around the family dinner table. Drawing on his wide range, he approaches a primal struggle shaped by the spirit of the universe with a dreamlike yet sharp eye. Readers may notice affinities with Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin and Jeff VanderMeer, the writers the publisher names as points of comparison.
The novel mixes sensuality with satire as it examines how human society and technological innovation might threaten existence itself.
ISBN: 9780802161840
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