The Rescue tells the story of a submarine rescue mission during WWII, when 40 American refugees - missionary families, escaped POWs and sugar men who endured years of hell hiding from the Japanese - were snatched off a beach in the Philippines.

Set a year before the action of his Booker-shortlisted 'Umbrella', Will Self's new novel continues its exploration of the complex relationship between human psychopathology and human technological progress; and like 'Umbrella', weaves together multiple narratives across several decades of the twentieth century to produce a fiendish tapestry depicting the state we're enmeshed in.