OHMIGOD!

A deeply anxious man deals with the disruptive reappearance of God in Asadi’s comic novel.

God has come back to earth. The deity, who looks “like everyone thought he did,” is standing motionless in a Middle Eastern desert as the devout gather around to stare (and record him for TikTok). At home in the United Kingdom, Sam Dalton has no intention of seeing God. The agnostic Brit’s anxiety and aversion to change are intense on a normal day, and the prospect of a returned creator is too overwhelming. As God begins to speak and world leaders call for an ecumenical embrace of the deity, Sam frets over whether the garbage will be picked up at the regular time. His mother panics and his ex-girlfriend tries to reconnect. Sam just wants to go about his life—his errands, his morning run—and do his best to ignore God’s actions, which are quite distressing: He curses Egypt with a plague, foments further conflict in Palestine, and rains brimstone down upon the inhabitants of Las Vegas. When the president of the United States declares war on God to prevent further loss of life, things only spiral further out of control. God is killed soon after, heaven disappears, angels visit the earth in human form (including one particular angel named John who ends up on Sam’s doorstep), and…well, it’s starting to feel as though things will never be the same. Asadi has a great sense of human nature, and the book is often quite funny, even in its darkest moments. “Hope you’re okay,” Sam texts his ex, Emma, early in the crisis. “Yeah, god stuff is a bit mad. Just wait and see, I think.” The book ingeniously captures the contemporary sense of powerlessness that accompanies world events, from wars to pandemics to autocratic rulers, and the struggles one undergoes to simply get through the day. Asadi does not simply rest on the strength of his premise but continues to throw in new twists, digging deeper into Sam’s sense of incongruity.

A suspenseful, insightful satire of modern calamity.