Penguin Science Fiction: Dimension Of Miracles

Announced in a thunderclap out of another day’s tedium, hapless New Yorker Tom Carmody learns that he is the winner of the Intergalactic Sweepstake. Accepting with a shrug, he is whipped across the universe to collect his prize. The catch? There’s no way home. Enlisting the help of galactic bureaucrats, planetary engineers and a couple of gods, Carmody embarks on a desperate search for Earth, all the while being pursued by a perplexing predatory creature . . .

Often cited as an influence on Douglas Adams, Dimension of Miracles is a masterwork of electric humour that offers an oblique examination of human nature amid the vastness of the cosmos.