'I was sitting bolt upright in bed breathing fast and staring at the wall. The daylight was streaming into the motel room through the slats of the blinds. I seemed to have been awake, and asleep, for ages...'John Hobson, a geneticist, wakes one morning to find his watch stopped at 6.12. The streets are deserted, there are no signs of life or death anywhere, and every clock he finds has stopped: at 6.12. Is Hobson the last person left on the planet?

Inventive and suspenseful, The Quiet Earth is a confronting journey into the future-and a dark past.

This new edition of Craig Harrison's highly sought-after 1981 novel-which was later made into a cult film starring Bruno Lawrence, Pete Smith and Alison Routledge-comes with an introduction by Bernard Beckett.