Things We Didn't See Coming

Things We Didn't See Coming is a 2009 short story collection by the Australian author Steven Amsterdam originally published by Sleepers Publishing.^[1]

It was the winner of the 2009 The Age Book of the Year Award – Fiction.^[2]

The collection comprises nine inter-connected stories which follow one man over a period of three decades.^[3]

• "What We Know Now"
• "The Theft That Got Me Here"
• "Dry Land"
• "Cakewalk"
• "Uses for Vinegar"
• "The Forest for the Trees"
• "Predisposed"
• "The Profit Motive"
• "Best Medicine"

Writing in Australian Book Review Rebecca Starford noted that "Amsterdam takes the well-worn premise of the post-millennial apocalypse and reworks it, creating a dystopia of catastrophic climate change, drug addiction, viral epidemics, alternative relationships and bureaucratic wrangling. It is a familiar world." She concluded that the collection is the "perfect combination of uncanny landscapes, existential anxiety and social critique."^[4]

After the collection's initial publication by Sleepers Publishing in Australia in 2009,^[1] it was republished as follows:

• Pantheon Books, USA, 2009^[3]
• Harvill Secker, UK, 2010^[3]
• Hachette Livre, Australia, 2016^[5]

It was also translated into Dutch in 2010, and French in 2012.^[3]

• 2009 The Age Book of the Year Award – Fiction, winner^[2]
• 2009 The Age Book of the Year Award, winner^[2]

• 2009 in Australian literature