They see themselves as bearing witness, and there is this guilty sense - they believe that they were rejected by God.' 'It's a declaration of faith and a sense that they have that there's no future and they don't have to worry about their health. 'The thing that makes so distinctive is that they're smoking constantly,' says Perrotta. Tom Perrotta is the author of several novels, including Election and Little Children. No matter what horrible thing happens in the world, the culture seems to move on.' I thought, I'm such a skeptic that even if it did happen, I would resist the implications of it, and I also thought that three years later, everyone would have forgotten about it. But I kept thinking: What if it did happen?. to laugh it off - it's sort of a funny idea, people just floating away.

'I spent a lot of time thinking about contemporary Christianity, and obviously the rapture kept coming up,' he says. Perrotta tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he got the idea for the novel while traveling around the country, doing speaking engagements for The Abstinence Teacher, his novel about small-town culture wars. The date passed by with no apparent rapture, and Camping became the butt of many late-night talk show jokes.īut what if the rapture did actually occur? That's the premise of Tom Perrotta's latest novel, The Leftovers, which examines the aftermath of an unexplained rapturelike event in which millions of people around the globe inexplicably disappear into thin air.

Last year, California-based preacher Harold Camping announced that the beginning of the end of the world would take place on May 21, 2011. The Leftovers is now available in paperback. This interview was originally broadcast on August 25, 2011. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Leftovers Author Tom Perrotta

The leftovers by tom perrotta