The End of the World is Flat

Mel Winterbourne’s modest map-making charity, the Orange Peel Foundation, has achieved all its aims and she’s ready to shut it down. But glamorous tech billionaire Joey Talavera has other ideas. He hijacks the foundation for his own purpose: to convince the world that the earth is flat.

Using the dark arts of social media at his new master’s behest, Mel’s ruthless young successor, Shane Foxley, turns science on its head. He persuades gullible online zealots that old-style ‘globularism’ is hateful. Teachers and airline pilots face ruin if they reject the new ‘True Earth’ orthodoxy.

Can Mel and her fellow heretics – vilified as ‘True-Earth Rejecting Globularists’ (Tergs) – thwart Orange Peel before insanity takes over? Might the solution to the problem lie in the 15th century?

Using his trademark mix of history and satire to poke fun at modern foibles, Simon Edge is at his razor-sharp best in a caper that may be more relevant than you think.

‘Simon Edge – a voice of sanity in the Twitter hellscape – wears his anger remarkably lightly as he skewers the shocking state of the trans rights row with some nifty, often snort-inducingly funny satire’ The Times

‘I hugely recommend Simon Edge’s magnificent pair of novels, The End of the World is Flat and In the Beginning. Coruscating satires on currently trendy anti-science lunacy, and the spiteful viciousness of its juvenile zealots and their cowardly adult enablers’ Richard Dawkins

‘A bracingly sharp satire on the sleep of reason and the tyranny of twaddle. Simon Edge reveals how extraordinary delusions have the power to captivate us – until, one by one, we start coming to our senses’ Francis Wheen

‘In between punching the air and shouting “yes!”, I laughed so hard I nearly fell in my cauldron. A masterpiece’ Julie Bindel

‘This sparkling little comic novel is more than playful: it’s a satire of Swiftian ferocity, a thinly veiled parody of a prevailing madness of the hour’ Matthew Parris, The Times

‘Inspired… Edge has glorious, madcap fun…doing what Aristophanes thought poets should do in circumstances like these: save the city from itself. He holds social foibles and cod science up to ridicule with grace, wit and charm’ Helen Dale, The Critic

‘This witty author mixes history with a hilarious spoof of identity politics, virtue signalling, cancel culture and Twitter pile-ons’ Saga Magazine

‘A clever satire on the folly that ensues when a once-respected charity abandons principle and reason’ Joanna Cherry

‘Well-crafted, humane and engaging. The work is more than a clever jab at trans ideology; it stands alone both as a modern morality tale charting one man’s descent into lies, and a warning about the vulnerability of the liberal values upon which modern society rests’ Lesbian & Gay News

‘A highly-entertaining satire about ideology, social media manipulation, and lobbying fiefdoms that have overstayed their welcome. This is Animal Farm for the era of gender lunacy, with jokes - and, right now, we all need a laugh’ Jane Harris

‘A satire that skewers the insanity of gender-identity ideology with the wit and brilliance of a modern-day Swift’ Helen Joyce

Paperback: 336pp

Published: Lightning Books (August 2021)

ISBN: 9781785632402