Ninni holmqvist biography of william

Fiction – paperback; Oneworld Publications; 272 pages; 2010. Translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Ninni Holmqvist’s The Unit is set in a dystopian future where a human being’s worth is measured by their ability and willingness to marry and have children.

Ninni holmqvist biography of william hurt

If you have failed to settle down and reproduce by the age of 50, for women, and 60, for men, you are immediately shipped off to a special facility — The Unit, of the title.

Here, under the ever-watchful eyes of CCTV cameras and well-attuned listening devices, you can live the rest of your days in relative comfort, with your every whim — bar freedom — catered for.

But this comes at a price, for the Unit is essentially a donor bank for biological material. And that biological material is sourced from those “dispensable” 50- and 60-year-olds who are its captive residents.

This is a rather chilling premise for a book, no?