The Emergency by George Packer

A gripping fable of imperial collapse that illuminates the crises of our times.

An empire has collapsed from boredom and loss of faith in itself. In the Emergency that follows, youth rebellions of urban Burghers and rural Yeomen embrace radical new ideas of humanity.

Doctor Hugo Rustin, chief surgeon at the Imperial College Hospital, is increasingly estranged from his city and his family – from his wife, Annabelle, who finds fulfillment in their changed community; and especially from his teenage daughter, Selva, who has turned against her father’s values. When an incident at the hospital leads to Rustin’s disgrace, he seeks redemption in a quixotic and dangerous journey into the countryside, with Selva as his companion, just as the conflict between Burghers and Yeomen is reaching a crisis.

The Emergency is a visionary novel of ideas and a taut page-turner that goes to the nerve center of what it mean to live in a time of fracture and upheaval. It asks what we owe one another across divided generations and classes, what common human bonds remain when a society falls apart. In creating a vividly imagined world, Packer takes us deep into the heart of our troubled moment.

About the Author: George Packer is an award-winning author and a staff writer at The Atlantic. He has written many books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (winner of the National Book Award) and, most recently, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. He is also the author of two previous novels and a play, and the editor of a two-volume edition of the essays of George Orwell.

11 Nov 2025
 

The Emergency by George Packer ISBN 9781761777318