‘A Departure is horror story, road story, love story – a shockingly good debut novel about what happens when one world brutally ends and a new world begins. It is a book that self-consciously elbows its way into the company of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – and like those great books, it will stay with you for long after you have read the final page. A cracking good read that has at its black heart hope, humanity and a dream of escape.’

‘At 23 years of age, Tom Ward is a prize-winning journalist, an accomplished novelist and quite possibly the best young writer in the country. He writes fiction, he writes non-fiction and he does it all brilliantly – with humour and heart and massive ambition. The smart move would be to read everything with his name on.’

‘A Departure’ is available here.

Tony Parsons’ new novel, ‘The Murder Bag’ is due to be published by Random House in 2014.