Less meets the year 1300 in this exhilarating and thoughtfully genre-defying literary novel about a man transported through time in a moment of extreme stress, whose modern anxieties are replaced by medieval brutalitiesNewly laid off George’s internet bill is in his ex-boyfriend’s name. He’s got a spider-infested apartment, and two of the six dogs he’s walking in London have just escaped. It’s pure undiluted stress that sends him into a spiral, all the way to the year 1300.

When he comes to, George recognizes the same rolling hills of Greenwich Park. But the luxuries and phone service of modernity are nowhere. In their place are locals with a bizarre, slanted speech in awe of his foreign clothes, who swiftly toss him in a dungeon.

Despite the barbarity of a medieval world, a servant named Simon helps George acclimate to a simpler, easier existence—until a summons from the King threatens to send his life up in flames.