in Brussels 2034 Cyrile Standaert, a middle-aged engineer, loses his partner following a hit and run car accident. Thereafter his life and mental health begin to unravel, and his two teenage children in turn begin to slide into truancy and drugs.

It is at this point that he is visited by his future self, who has been drafted into a time travel pilot programme run by scientist Sofie Debroux. Future Cyrile offers Present Cyrile the chance to go back to 2008 and change his future.

In return for this, he is tasked with helping Sofie's grandfather, former physics lecturer Herman Debroux, to escape a fate of homelessness and alcoholism. Having returned to 2008 Cyrile meets a young Herman and his wife, Nina Debroux, just as they are beginning their married life.

The couple take Cyrile into their house as a lodger, and the trio then attempt to set up young Past Cyril of 2008 with a teenage Genevieve Wilkes. They find themselves confronted with the tribal politics of the time, separationist tensions, personal suspicions and cohabitation frictions, not to mention a few time-travel paradoxes along the way.

In terms of its inspiration, many aspects of it are based on my own experiences living, working and growing up in Brussels and the Flemish belt around it, along with the differences in culture between myself (a half-Scot, half-Cypriot who is Belgian by proxy) and the local communities. The book is also inspired by a few personal hypotheses about how the coronavirus pandemic will affect our lives, change our habits and shape our views in the future, based on the ways it has done so already.

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