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It is 2031 and the must-have gadget is the Holophin: a tiny, dolphin-shaped microprocessor which cures your worst impulses and phobias, comforts you in your grief or boredom and makes everything look much, much prettier.

Hatsuka and Max are students at the Takin International School, a learning institute so magnificent it produces Holophins as a by-product of its own projects. The billionth device has just been sold, but when Takin's best students are stalked by a shady rival manufacturer, Holophin's monopoly, and the narrative itself, begins to unravel – with unexpected consequences.

This hallucinatory and darkly funny sci-fi mystery is the debut novella by acclaimed poet Luke Kennard, a refracted meditation on identity, technology and the imagination.

"A sparky, image-rich novella that reboots familiar genre themes"

David Langford, The Telegraph

"A truly 21st-century writer, taking inspiration from all over the place, unafraid of barriers and conventions."

Ian McMillan

"Inventive... fearless and hugely enjoyable."

Nick Laird, The Telegraph

Luke Kennard was born in Kingston upon Thames in 1981. He won an Eric Gregory award in 2005 for The Solex Brothers, re-issued in 2010. In 2007 he became the youngest poet ever nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Collection for The Harbour Beyond the Movie (2010). The Migraine Hotel (2009) was featured in the Guardian Review. In 2010 he co-judged the 2010 Foyles Young Poets Prize with Jane Draycott. His criticism appears in Poetry London, the TLS and The National, the UAE's English-language newspaper. He lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.