The year is 2066. After a string of ecological disasters, on the one hand, and a technological acceleration that makes a substantial part of human labor redundant and heralds an era of material abundance, on the other hand, the Middle East realigns politically, socially, and economically, as do other regions of the world. The Banks of the Jordan, the area that includes Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and parts of Lebanon and Syria, is a district with an autonomous government, subordinate to the Council of the Middle Eastern Union. Every individual member is entitled to a universal salary and public housing in exchange for hours devoted to the public benefit.

This scenario, with all its details and minutiae, was created by four writers—two women and two men—who participated in a pioneering project of post-capitalist literature at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, as a research group led by Dr. Kfir Cohen Lustig. Four novellas were born of this thought experiment, each of them set in a shared, post-capitalist scenario, and constitute a platform for examining the possibility of existence in it and the challenges that await citizens in its planned society.