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It’s been twelve years since Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White was met with universal acclaim, and with his latest novel, it quickly becomes clear to the reader that he has struck metaphorical gold once again. The Book of Strange New Things is a mass of contradictions, but in the best possible way. It’s a dystopian novel where the protagonist dwells within a utopia for the vast majority of the text, a tale of aliens which questions what it means to be human, and a science fiction work that explores faith. The premise is simple but ingenious, as we spend the entirety of the novel in the company of Peter, a Christian minister sent on a mission to a faraway planet called Oasis, with the sole purpose of bringing the word of God to the indigenous population.

The main conflict presents itself through the messages Peter exchanges with his wife Beatrice, who has been left behind on earth. Their correspondence shows a growing anger on her side as the world itself begins to break down around her, and a kind of restless evasiveness on Peter’s as he tries to find her life as interesting as his own, with consequences that test the strength of their faith and love for one another.

In juxtaposing the human with the alien, Faber repeats the trick he performed in Under the Skin. He asks big questions about the nature of human existence, faith and belief, and also questions the malleable nature of morality. In an almost-Beckettian style, he leaves us waiting for answers that never come. “We need a certain proportion of things to be OK,” Bea tells Peter, “In order to be able to cope with other things going wrong.” Perhaps that’s all we can ever hope for.