2088, available on Amazon and Apple books, offers readers a richly layered narrative filled with suspense, emotional depth, and an evocative exploration of the ties that bind us—and those that threaten to break us apart.

excerpt

Chapter 1

The day the rocket fell was an ordinary Tuesday, or as ordinary as Tuesdays could be in London, 1944, when the sky had become something to fear rather than admire. Jonathan Cooper, who was called Jony by his mother and Johnny by his father and simply Cooper by his older brother, was sitting at the kitchen table drawing circles with his index finger through a puddle of spilled milk. The milk formed thin white rivers that branched outward, like a map of possible fates, while his mother scrubbed potatoes with hands reddened from lye soap and cold water. His father wouldn’t be home for hours. His brother Thomas was upstairs, building a model airplane from scraps of wood and glue he’d pilfered from the furniture maker’s shop where he worked three days a week.

The Mickey Mouse watch on Jony’s wrist, a gift from his father on his sixth birthday, ticked mechanically at 3:42 in the afternoon when Jony saw the first vision. The rocket hadn’t even been launched yet from its platform in the distant Netherlands, but Jony saw it falling, a thin black needle against the gray London sky, aimed precisely at the roof of their narrow brick house on Lambeth Road. He saw the explosion before it happened, saw the walls crumbling inward, saw the kitchen table where he sat splintering into jagged wooden shards that would fly outward with enough force to impale anything in their path. He saw his mother’s body thrown against the wall, her spine breaking on impact. He saw the ceiling collapse onto Thomas upstairs, crushing him instantly. He saw his father arriving home hours later to find nothing but rubble where his family had been.

All this passed before Jony’s eyes in less than three seconds.

“Mum,” he said, his voice strange even to his own ears. “We need to leave. Now.”

Eleanor Cooper turned from the sink, potato in one hand, knife in the other, her eyebrows raised in question. “What’s that, love?"

“It’s going to fall here,” Jony said. “The rocket. In seventeen minutes. We need to go.”

Eleanor set down the potato and knife. In another time, with another child, she might have dismissed such talk as fancy. But Jony had always been different. Even as an infant, he would cry before the air raid sirens sounded. She had learned to trust his strange intuitions.

“Thomas!” she called up the stairs. “Come down this instant. We’re going to the Anderson shelter.”

Thomas appeared at the top of the stairs, glue on his fingers and irritation on his face. “There’s no siren,” he said.

“We’re going all the same,” Eleanor replied, the firmness in her voice brooking no argument. “Jony says we must.”

Thomas rolled his eyes but descended the stairs. Eleanor grabbed her coat and the small bag she kept packed for air raids. Jony took only his wooden chess set, a small box with a board that folded in half, containing carved pieces his father had made for him. The Mickey Mouse watch remained on his wrist, ticking steadily.

They left the house at 3:49. Thomas grumbling, Eleanor nervous, Jony silent and pale. They walked quickly toward the public shelter two streets away, but Jony suddenly stopped.

“Not that one,” he said. “It won’t be safe either.”

Eleanor hesitated, torn between social convention and her son’s inexplicable certainty. “Where then, love?”

“The church,” Jony said, pointing toward St. Mary’s, whose stone walls had stood for centuries through plague and fire and now war.

They reached the church at 3:56. The heavy wooden doors were unlocked—they were always unlocked these days, offering sanctuary to anyone who sought it. The three Coopers sat in a pew near the back, Eleanor praying silently, Thomas fidgeting, Jony staring at the stained-glass window depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, his body pierced with arrows that reminded Jony of falling rockets.

At 3:59, they heard it—the distinctive whistling sound of a V-2 in its terminal descent, followed by the thunderous explosion that shook the ground beneath their feet. Dust fell from the church’s ceiling. The stained-glass windows rattled in their lead frames but held.

“That was close,” Thomas whispered.

“It was our house,” Jony said without emotion. “And now Father won’t have anywhere to come home to.”

Eleanor began to sob. Thomas put his arm around her shoulders. Jony opened his chess set and began setting up the pieces on the board, white and black soldiers arranged in their starting positions, ready for battle.

William Cooper arrived at the church at 7:23 that evening, his face streaked with soot, his eyes wild with grief and relief. He had gone to their street and found nothing but rubble where their house had stood. A neighbor had told him that Eleanor had left with the boys shortly before the rocket hit. William had searched three shelters before someone directed him to St. Mary’s.

“You knew,” William said to Jony later that night, as they huddled together in the church basement where the vicar had allowed them to stay. “How did you know?”

Jony couldn’t explain it then, not in words that adults could understand. He only knew that sometimes he saw things before they happened, like watching a film reel running ahead of the present moment. He had always seen things—small things usually: a cup falling from the table, a bird flying into a window, the pattern of cards in a game before they were dealt. But never anything as big as this. Never anything as terrible.

“Just knew,” he said, and continued moving his chess pieces in silence.

London existed in a state of suspended catastrophe. The V-2s fell without warning, silent until the moment of impact, dealing arbitrary death from above. Unlike the air raids of earlier years, there were no sirens to warn of their approach, no time to take shelter. Only Jony knew when they were coming, and only sometimes, and only for those rockets that would fall close enough to affect him directly.

After the destruction of their home, the Coopers moved into a small flat in Bermondsey that had been vacated by a family who had fled to the countryside. William continued his work at the docks, unloading supply ships that crossed the Channel at great risk. Eleanor found employment at a munitions factory, her delicate hands now assembling the instruments of death that might kill other mothers’ sons in Germany. Thomas, at sixteen, lied about his age and joined the Home Guard, patrolling the streets at night with a rifle he barely knew how to use.

And Jony, who turned seven four days after they lost their house, went to school when it was in session and spent the rest of his time moving his chess pieces in patterns that made sense only to him, the Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist perpetually showing 3:42, the time of his first vision. The watch had stopped working, but Jony refused to have it repaired or replaced. “It’s right in another way,” he told his mother, who didn’t understand but had learned not to question her youngest son’s peculiarities.

The visions came more frequently now. Jony would freeze in place, his eyes fixed on something no one else could see, his small body rigid. Sometimes they were benign—he would announce that Mrs. Pemberton from the first floor would bring them a loaf of bread that afternoon, or that there would be no school the next day because a water main had burst—and sometimes they were lifesaving. “Don’t take the number 17 bus today,” he told his mother one morning in February. She took the number 23 instead and arrived at the factory in tears after learning that the 17 had received a direct hit from a V-2, killing everyone aboard.

William and Eleanor didn’t speak of their son’s gift outside the family. In a time of heightened suspicion, when German spies were rumored to be everywhere and neighbors informed on neighbors for the slightest infraction, a child who could predict rocket strikes might attract unwanted attention from authorities. So they told Jony to keep quiet about what he saw, to tell only them, and they made excuses for his strange behavior when necessary.

Thomas alone remained skeptical. “It’s just coincidence,” he said to his parents when Jony wasn’t present. “Or he’s overheard things and is repeating them. He can’t actually see the future.”

“Then how do you explain us not being in the house when the rocket hit?” Eleanor asked.

Thomas had no answer for that, only a teenager’s stubborn resistance to accepting something that couldn’t be explained by rational means.

But on March 12, 1945, even Thomas became a believer.

Jony was playing chess with himself in the corner of the flat, moving the pieces in a game that followed no rules recognized by the chess federation. The Mickey Mouse watch remained fixed at 3:42 on his thin wrist. William was at work. Eleanor was peeling potatoes for dinner. Thomas was cleaning his rifle, preparing for his night patrol.

“Thomas, you can’t go out tonight,” Jony said without looking up from his chess game.

Thomas sighed. “I have to, squirt. It’s my duty.”

“If you go on patrol tonight, you’ll die,” Jony said, still focused on the chess pieces. He moved his knight in an L-shape, capturing an invisible enemy. “The rocket will fall on Crimscott Street at 11:17. You’ll be there when it happens.”

Thomas looked at his mother, who had stopped peeling potatoes and was watching Jony with concern.

“Perhaps you should tell them you’re ill,” she suggested carefully.

“And have them think I’m a coward?” Thomas shook his head. “I can just avoid Crimscott Street.”

“It won’t matter,” Jony said. “You’ll be sent there. Something about a suspicious person.”

Thomas set down his rifle. “This is ridiculous. He’s just trying to frighten me.”

Eleanor wiped her hands on her apron. “Has he ever been wrong? About the important things?”

Thomas couldn’t recall a single instance when Jony’s predictions had failed to materialize. Still, the idea that his seven-year-old brother could see the future remained absurd to him, an affront to his practical nature.

“I’ll tell Lieutenant Morris I’m ill,” he conceded finally.

That night, as the family huddled in their flat listening to the BBC wireless, a V-2 rocket fell on Crimscott Street at 11:19, two minutes later than Jony had predicted. The next day, they learned that three Home Guard members had been killed, including the young man who had taken Thomas’s place on patrol. They had been sent to investigate reports of a suspicious person seen entering an abandoned warehouse.

Thomas sat on his bed for hours afterward, staring at the wall, trying to comprehend how close he had come to death and how he had been saved by his little brother’s impossible knowledge. When he finally emerged, he found Jony at the kitchen table, still playing his strange version of chess.

“How does it work?” Thomas asked, sitting across from him. “What do you see?”

Jony moved a pawn forward two spaces, opening his game. “It’s like remembering, but forward instead of backward,” he said. “Like when you remember what you had for breakfast yesterday, except I remember what’s going to happen tomorrow. Not everything. Just the important parts.”

“And how do you know what’s important?”

Jony considered this, his small face serious beneath his mop of unruly brown hair. “It feels different. Heavier. Like how you know when something matters even if no one tells you it does.”

Thomas watched his brother’s hands move across the chessboard, noticed how the other boy’s fingers trembled slightly, how thin his wrists had become. “Does it hurt? When you see things?”

Jony nodded. “Sometimes. In my head. Like pressing on a bruise.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” Thomas said.

Jony captured one of his own pawns with a bishop, a move illegal in conventional chess. “It’s all right. I wouldn’t believe me either.”

The V-2 campaign against London intensified as winter gave way to spring in 1945. The rockets fell day and night, striking residential neighborhoods, factories, schools, hospitals—anywhere and everywhere, with no discernible pattern except the pattern of destruction they left behind. More than a thousand Londoners died in those months, crushed beneath rubble or incinerated in the explosions or suffocated in the aftermath.

The Coopers survived, guided by Jony’s warnings. When he said they should sleep in the public shelter, they did. When he said William should take a different route to work, he complied without question. They moved through London like ghosts, one step ahead of death, guided by the visions of a child who could not explain his gift but used it to protect those he loved.

But the gift was not without cost. Each vision left Jony more drained than the last. He grew pale and thin despite Eleanor’s efforts to feed him properly with their limited rations. Dark circles appeared beneath his eyes. He stopped attending school entirely after he collapsed in the classroom one day, overcome by a vision of a rocket striking three streets away. The teacher had been sympathetic—many children were suffering from what adults called “rocket shock”—but suggested that perhaps Jony should remain at home until he had recovered.

He never returned to school. Instead, he spent his days playing chess and watching the Mickey Mouse watch that never moved from 3:42, as if that moment of his first vision had somehow frozen time for him while the rest of the world continued its forward march.

In April, as Allied forces pressed deeper into Germany and victory in Europe seemed increasingly certain, William brought home a newspaper with the headline: “V-2 FACTORY DESTROYED, ROCKET CAMPAIGN AGAINST LONDON MAY BE OVER.”

“Is it true?” Eleanor asked Jony after William had gone to bed. “Are the rockets finished?”

Jony moved his white queen diagonally across the board, into the path of a black rook. “Almost,” he said. “There are still seven more to fall. The last one will land in Stepney on April 22nd.”

“And then it will be over?”

Jony looked up at his mother, his eyes older than they had any right to be in his young face. “The rockets will be over,” he said.

Eleanor understood what he wasn’t saying. “And your visions? Will they stop too?”

Jony shook his head. “They’re getting stronger. Showing me things further away. Things that haven’t been built yet. Buildings taller than St. Paul’s. Machines that think like people. Wars in places I don’t recognize.” He captured his black rook with the white queen. “I can’t make them stop.”

Eleanor knelt beside her son and wrapped her arms around his thin shoulders. “We’ll find a way, love. There must be someone who can help.”

But Jony knew better. In his visions, he had seen doctors examining him, priests praying over him, scientists measuring his brainwaves with strange equipment. None of them could explain what was happening to him. None of them could make it stop.

Chapter 2

On April 22, 1945, the last V-2 rocket of the war fell on Hughes Mansions in Stepney, killing 134 people, just as Jony had predicted. The Cooper family heard the explosion from their flat in Bermondsey, a distant thunder that marked the end of one kind of terror.

But for Jony, a different kind of terror was just beginning.

That night, as London celebrated the end of the rocket campaign with cautious optimism, Jony experienced a vision more powerful than any that had come before. He saw not just one moment but many, cascading through his mind like falling dominoes: the surrender of Germany, the bombs dropping on Japan, the division of Europe, the decades of cold war that would follow, the fall of empires, the rise of new technologies, climate change, pandemics, conflicts yet to be named.

He saw his own future too: the doctors who would study him, the government officials who would want to use his ability, the years of isolation in facilities designed to extract his knowledge while containing his influence. He saw how they would separate him from his family, how they would prompt his visions with drugs and electrical stimulation, how they would record everything he said and use it to shape their policies and strategies.

And he saw how it would end for him: alone in a white room, his mind fractured by too many visions, too many possible futures crowding his consciousness until he could no longer distinguish between what had happened, what was happening, and what might happen.

When the vision finally released him, Jony found himself on the floor of their flat, his parents and brother kneeling beside him in panic. Blood trickled from his nose. The Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist—the watch that had stopped at 3:42 on the day of his first vision—had begun ticking again.

“Jony, what did you see?” William asked, his voice rough with fear.

Jony looked at his father, then at his mother and brother. He loved them, and they loved him, and in that moment he made a decision that would alter the future he had seen.

“Nothing,” he lied. “I didn’t see anything. I think the visions are gone.”

Relief washed over their faces, followed quickly by concern when they saw the blood on his face.

“Are you sure, love?” Eleanor asked, wiping the blood away with her handkerchief.

“I’m sure,” Jony said. “I think it was the rockets. They were causing it somehow. And now they’re gone.”

It wasn’t a complete lie. The V-2 rockets were indeed connected to his ability—the shock of foreseeing the destruction of their home had somehow unlocked whatever latent gift he possessed. But the rockets’ end had not switched off his visions; if anything, they had intensified, reaching further into the future, showing him more than any child—any person—should ever have to see.

But if he told the truth, if he admitted that he could now see decades ahead, he knew what would happen. His parents would seek help, and that would lead to discovery by authorities who would recognize the strategic value of a child who could foresee future events. The path from there was clear and terrible.

So Jony lied, and in lying, he chose a different future than the one he had foreseen. He would keep his visions secret, recording them in a cipher of his own invention, using his chess pieces to represent different people and events. He would learn to live with the headaches and nosebleeds, the moments of disconnection from the present as future events intruded on his consciousness. He would protect his family by pretending to be normal, and he would protect himself from those who would exploit his gift.

Years passed. London rebuilt itself. The Cooper family moved to a small house in Essex, away from the memories of rockets falling from the sky. William worked in the shipyards until he retired. Eleanor tended her garden and volunteered at the local library. Thomas married, had children of his own, visited on Sundays with presents for his nieces and nephews.

And Jony, who stopped being called Jony when he turned twelve and insisted on Jonathan instead, grew into a quiet, thoughtful man who taught history and maths at the local comprehensive school. He had not yet married, preferring solitude and the company of his chess pieces, which he still arranged in patterns that made sense only to him. The Mickey Mouse watch remained on his wrist, though he wore long sleeves to cover it, embarrassed by such a childish accessory but unwilling to part with it.

His students found him strange but kind, possessed of an uncanny knowledge of historical events and an ability to explain complex geopolitical situations with remarkable clarity. Some noticed that he would occasionally stop mid-sentence, his eyes focusing on something distant, before continuing as if nothing had happened. Others observed that he would sometimes write dates on the blackboard years before events occurred, then quickly erase them with an apologetic smile.

His colleagues believed he suffered from migraines, which explained his occasional absences and the dark circles that sometimes appeared beneath his eyes. They didn’t know about the notebooks he kept locked in his desk at home, filled with predictions written in his personal cipher, a record of futures that might or might not come to pass depending on the choices made by people who had no idea they were at critical junctures in history.

Sometimes, in the privacy of his study, Jonathan would allow himself to wonder what might have happened if he had told the truth that night in April 1945. Whether the government would have used his abilities to prevent wars, save lives, create a better world. Or whether they would have done exactly what he feared: isolated him, exploited him, destroyed him in their quest to control the future.

He would never know for certain. The path not taken remained shrouded in the mist of possibility, one of many futures that would never materialize. The future that did materialize—his quiet life, his secret burden, his private recordings of things to come—was not perfect, but it was his, chosen rather than imposed.

On the seventieth anniversary of the day the V-2 rocket destroyed his childhood home, Jonathan Cooper imagined sitting in his study, the ancient Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist, his chess pieces arranged on the board in a pattern representing current world leaders and their relationships. He was an old man now in his imagination, his hair white, his hands gnarled with arthritis, but his mind remained sharp, still capable of sorting through the cascade of potential futures that continued to flow through his consciousness.

He had learned to live with his gift, to use it when he could to make small differences—an anonymous warning here, a strategic piece of advice there—without revealing its source. He had watched as some of his predicted futures came to pass exactly as he had foreseen, while others diverged in ways large and small based on individual choices and random chance.

He picked up a pawn—the piece he used to represent himself—and placed it in the center of the board. The visions would die with him, he knew. There would be no one to continue his work, no one to warn of dangers still beyond the horizon of normal human perception. But perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps the future belonged to those who lived in the present, making choices based on hope rather than foreknowledge, their paths illuminated by possibility rather than prophecy.

Jonathan Cooper closed his eyes and allowed the visions to come one last time: not the terrible futures of war and destruction that had haunted him for decades, but the simple, beautiful moments of human connection that persisted despite everything—a child’s laughter, a couple’s embrace, a hand extended in friendship, a family gathered around a table.

These too were the future, as real and significant as any global upheaval or technological revolution. These too were worth recording, worth remembering, worth protecting.

The Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist ticked steadily, keeping time with the present moment, while Jonathan Cooper’s mind continued its solitary journey through the landscapes of what might be, the last clairvoyant of London, the boy who had survived the falling sky.

Chapter 3

In the Essex countryside, 1953, Jonathan Cooper sat at his desk in the small bedroom of their brick cottage, listening to the distant sounds of his mother pruning roses in the garden. The Mickey Mouse watch remained fixed at 3:42 on his wrist, a constant reminder of that first terrible vision, though he had long since started wearing a proper Timex on his right wrist that actually kept the correct time. He was fifteen now, gangly and awkward, his body stretched thin like taffy pulled too far, bones pressing against pale skin as if trying to escape. The local doctor had assured Eleanor Cooper that this was normal for boys his age, just a growth spurt, nothing to worry about. The doctor didn’t know about the headaches that left Jonathan curled on his bed in the dark, or the nosebleeds that sometimes came without warning, staining his school uniform and earning him pitying looks from teachers who assumed he suffered from some chronic illness.

They weren’t entirely wrong. The visions were a kind of illness, Jonathan had decided, a disease of foreknowledge that infected his mind and isolated him from the normal flow of time that everyone else experienced. He had become skilled at hiding the symptoms, at excusing himself to the lavatory when he felt a vision approaching, at explaining away his occasional dissociative episodes as daydreaming or fatigue. He had even developed a rudimentary system for organizing what he saw, using a modified chess notation in journals he kept hidden beneath a loose floorboard under his bed.

The first journal had filled quickly after the last V-2 rocket fell on London. Jonathan had started it with the intention of recording only significant events, things that might affect the larger world, but he soon realized that significance was subjective, that the butterfly effect of small actions could ripple outward in ways impossible to predict even for someone who saw the future. So he recorded everything: the coronation of Elizabeth II, which would happen next month with unexpected rain showers that would dampen the crowds but not their spirits; the ascent of Everest by Hillary and Norgay, news of which would reach London on the same day as the coronation, though the climb itself would happen several days earlier; the death of Stalin and the power struggles that would follow in the Soviet Union; the gradual dissolution of the British Empire as colony after colony demanded independence; the coming space race that would captivate the world’s imagination even as it served as a surrogate battlefield for superpowers who dared not confront each other directly.

He recorded personal visions too, though these were rarer and often more fragmented: Thomas’s first child would be a boy born with a caul over his face, considered lucky by the old midwife who would assist at the birth; Eleanor would develop arthritis in her hands that would eventually force her to abandon gardening; William would suffer a minor heart attack at sixty-two but recover and live another decade; Jonathan himself would never marry, though not for lack of opportunity.

This last vision troubled him most, suggesting as it did that his condition—his gift, his curse, whatever one chose to call it—would prevent him from forming the kind of intimate connection that seemed to come naturally to others. He had already noticed his difficulty relating to peers, who found his occasional disconnection from the present moment disconcerting and his knowledge of things he shouldn’t know slightly frightening, though they couldn’t articulate why.

At school, Jonathan was respected but not popular, known for his intelligence and his strange, almost prescient comments in history and maths class, but rarely invited to the social gatherings that occupied most teenagers’ weekends. He told himself he didn’t mind, that he preferred the company of books and his chess set, that the burden of his visions left little energy for navigating the complex social hierarchies of adolescence. But sometimes, when he watched Thomas with his wife Joyce at Sunday dinners, their hands casually touching as they passed serving dishes, their shared glances communicating complete paragraphs of meaning, Jonathan felt a hollowness in his chest that no vision of the future could fill.

“Jonathan!” His mother’s voice called from the garden. “Come help me with these cuttings, will you?”

He closed his journal, replaced the floorboard, and went downstairs and out into the garden where Eleanor Cooper, her hair now streaked with gray but her movements still vigorous, was battling the rosebushes into submission.

“Hold these,” she said, handing him several thorny stems. “I want to plant them along the south wall. They should get enough sun there.”

Jonathan took the cuttings carefully, avoiding the thorns. “They’ll do well there,” he said. “Especially the yellow ones. They’ll bloom beautifully next summer.”

Eleanor paused in her work, studying her son’s face. “Will they now? Is that something you’ve seen, or just gardening advice?”

Jonathan looked away. They rarely spoke directly about his ability these days. After he had lied about the visions stopping, his parents had been relieved but watchful, noticing the signs that whatever afflicted their son had not, in fact, disappeared. They never pressed him for information, never demanded he use his gift for their benefit, but the awareness of his difference hung between them like an unspoken secret.

“Just gardening advice,” Jonathan said. “Yellow roses prefer full sun. Everyone knows that.”

Eleanor nodded, accepting the fiction. “Well, I hope you’re right. I’ve been trying to get decent yellow roses for years.” She went back to her digging, creating small holes for the cuttings. “Your father tells me you’ve been accepted to university. Cambridge, no less. Full scholarship.”

“Yes,” Jonathan said. “For history and maths.”

“Of course for history. You’ve always had a knack for it,” Eleanor’s voice remained carefully neutral, but Jonathan could hear the mixture of pride and concern beneath her words. “Will you be all right, do you think? Living away from home?”

What she meant was: Will you be able to hide your condition from others? Will the visions worsen in a new environment? Will you be safe?

“I’ll be fine,” Jonathan said, helping her plant the first cutting. “I’ve learned to manage it.”

Eleanor wiped her hands on her apron, leaving streaks of dirt across the floral pattern. “I worry, that’s all. Your father and I, we’ve always tried to protect you, but we can’t protect you at university.”

“I don’t need protection,” Jonathan said, more sharply than he intended. “I need to live, Mother. I need to try, at least.”

Eleanor touched his cheek, her gardening-roughened fingers gentle against his skin. “I know, love. Just promise you’ll write. And come home if it gets to be too much.”

Jonathan nodded, unable to tell her that he had already seen his years at Cambridge, had already experienced the midnight study sessions in ancient libraries, the lectures by professors whose books he would one day assign to his own students, the friendships that would form and dissolve, the one near-miss romance with a girl studying mathematics who would find his occasional absent spells both intriguing and ultimately too strange to accept. He couldn’t tell her that he had seen himself returning to this house for holidays, gradually watching his parents age, eventually helping his father arrange Eleanor’s funeral after the stroke that would take her in 1971. Some futures were too painful to share, even if they couldn’t be changed.

“I promise,” he said instead, and together they planted yellow roses that would indeed bloom beautifully the following summer, though Eleanor would never see them reach their full glory.

Description

In a world where seeing the future is both gift and curse, three generations of men must reckon with a power that saves lives—and destroys their own.

2088 is a literary thriller that begins with seven-year-old Jonathan Cooper’s miraculous evacuation of his family moments before V-2 rockets obliterate their London home in 1944. His inexplicable foresight becomes his most treasured secret and heaviest burden—one that will echo through generations.

When Jonathan’s son James inherits this clairvoyant gift, he leverages it to create award-winning documentaries, capturing history before it happens. But on September 11, 2001, his power almost fails him at the moment he needs it most. As the North Tower crumbles around him, James manages to save a Kenyan woman—and finds his life completely transformed in the process.

Years later, James lies broken in rehab, his mind deteriorating faster than his body. His estranged son Jake returns home to find a father he barely recognizes and a mystery that spans continents. The investigation leads Jake into a dangerous web of international art forgery, with a priceless Salvador Dalí at its center. From Africa to Rome, Barcelona to Dubai, Jake unravels family secrets while evading ruthless art thieves who believe he holds the key to a fortune.

Drawing comparison to Roberto Bolaño's epic 2666 and the multi-generational mysteries of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, this novel transcends typical thriller territory. 2088 explores the weight of inherited gifts, the price of foresight, and whether knowing the future means we're doomed to repeat the past.

In a world obsessed with predicting tomorrow, 2088 asks: What happens when the future finally catches up with you?

author Q & A

How did 2088 come about? What compelled you to write it?

2088 is the novel that refused to let me go. Over more than a decade, it haunted me—sometimes falling silent, sometimes demanding my attention with an urgency I couldn’t ignore. The writing process was anything but linear: I’d find myself channeling the voices of my characters, each with their own unique cadence and worldview, and the story would surge forward in unpredictable bursts. My goal was to craft a narrative that resonates across generations, which is why you’ll notice the styles shift—each chapter is a window into a different consciousness, a different era. To bring these characters to life, I wrote out their biographies in detail, tracing the choices and accidents that shaped them, hoping readers would see themselves reflected in their struggles and triumphs.

What is 2088 about?

At its heart, 2088 is a sweeping epic—a tapestry woven from threads of family, legacy, and the aftermath of tragedy. Imagine the haunting scope of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 crossed with the emotional resonance of Everything Is Illuminated. Spanning continents and decades, the novel explores how the past ripples forward, shaping destinies in ways both intimate and global. It’s a story about the secrets we inherit, the burdens we carry, and the hope that redemption is always possible, even when the world seems to be falling apart.

Can you expand on the plot and its characters?

The journey begins in 1944 with Jonathan Cooper, a clairvoyant child who saves his family from the devastation of V-2 rockets in London. As Jonathan grows, he hides his gift, becoming a teacher at Cambridge and keeping his visions secret. His son, James, inherits this ability and becomes a filmmaker with a knack for being in the right place at the right time—witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall and, later, the collapse of the North Tower on 9/11. That day becomes a crucible for James, leaving him physically and emotionally scarred.

Years later, James’s estranged son, Jake, unearths the tangled legacy left behind: a mysterious Salvador Dalí painting, a mother entangled in art forgery, and a romance his father kept hidden. Jake’s quest to understand his family takes him from Africa to Rome, Barcelona, and Dubai, as he pieces together a story that is both deeply personal and thrillingly international.

How does 9/11 shape the narrative?

The events of 9/11 are the novel’s gravitational center. The trauma of that day reverberates through every character, every secret, every choice. But 2088 is not just about a single tragedy—it’s about the universal experience of falling: falling in and out of love, falling from grace, falling through the cracks of history. The novel asks: How do we find meaning in chaos? How do we rebuild after we fall?

How do the characters process catastrophe?

One of the novel’s central voices, Elena, reflects on the impossibility of a single narrative after catastrophe:

> “Catastrophe resists singular narratives,” Elena explains. “It fragments experience, creates multiple perspectives, multiple truths that cannot be reconciled into a unified account… The patterns we find in catastrophe—whether statistical or narrative or symbolic—reflect our human need to make sense of the senseless, to find order in chaos, to establish meaning in events that threaten to overwhelm our capacity for understanding.”

This multiplicity of perspectives is woven throughout the novel, inviting readers to question the stories we tell ourselves about survival, guilt, and hope.

What can readers expect from 2088?

2088 offers a layered, immersive experience—a blend of suspense, emotional depth, and philosophical inquiry. It’s a novel for anyone who’s ever wondered how families survive the unthinkable, how secrets shape who we become, and how, even in the darkest times, the possibility of redemption endures. Expect a story that will keep you turning pages late into the night—and leave you thinking long after the final chapter.nteger tempus, elit in laoreet posuere, lectus neque blandit dui, et placerat urna diam mattis orci. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae. Quisque congue porttitor ullamcorper.