Peter Abbot

Librarian Peter Abbot

An evocative post-apocalyptic vision of loss, love and redemption ...

Last man on earth-I'm beginning to fantasize that. The last human survivor! Seems very unlikely, in a world inhabited by so many millions of people in so many cities, so many countries. But in this silence-who knows? Actually, I think it's the silence, and my deepening sense of isolation, that are encouraging me to think I may be alone, completely alone. -But how will I find out for sure, now that radio and TV and newspapers and the Internet and of course social media have all gone? So, don't even think about it! If I am the last, there's nobody out there to care! Keep active, exercise-think and write. No returned books to re-shelve now-or very few, the final few. However, I always did find pleasure and some company, or illusion of company, in books-and in my own writing, those unpublished poems and short stories piled up in my closet at home! So now here I am taking refuge again in the comfort of words? Beloved words! Of course nobody will read the ones I write now, almost certainly they won't. So who am I writing them for? Myself, I guess. My other self. The urge to communicate remains, remains to the end?-even if only with oneself.

So begins Librarian, a compelling short novel of survival and the search for meaning. Compelling characters and thought-provoking meditations on the meaning of philosophy and literature in a world gone wrong make Librarian a book you won't put down-and won't soon forget.

"To live through a devastating event, to become isolated from one's fellow humans and to face a crisis of diminishing resources is the all-to-real nightmare of our time. When, in Librarian by Peter Abbot, this happens to Peter, a university librarian in a mid-size town in Canada, he is challenged to discover and develop his own ability to survive, to search for signs of human life, and to preserve the cultural heritage for whomever else might have survived this mysterious armageddon. Librarian is a story of both inner and outer resources as the physical struggle to survive becomes a search for human warmth and meaning." -- John Passfield, author of Pompeii