Air, by Christian Kracht, translated from the German by Daniel Bowles (Liveright). In the first plot, the designer disappears during a solar storm while working on a project in Norway. In the second, the girl and the man run from soldiers sent by a malevolent ruler. In that reality, people live on what they forage and kill; they wear shared clothes; they don’t have inventions like mirrors or—crucially—antibiotics. The two meet at a bar one night, then go home together.