"Perfectly normal men and women head to their desks every day in a city laid to waste by guerrilla incursions, menaced by hordes of starving people, murderous children and cloned dogs, patrolled by armed helicopters, and plagued with acid rain. Among them is the Clerk, who is willing to be humiliated in order to keep his job--until he falls in love and allows himself to dream of someone else. To what depths is a man willing to go to hold on to a dream? The Clerk tells a story that happened yesterday, but that still hasn't happened, and yet is happening now. A story we didn't even notice because we're too tied up in our own jobs, salaries, appearances. This novel embraces an anti-utopia, a world of Ballard but also of Dostoyevsky."--