What would happen if city dwellers in cities with more than 1 million people suddenly had no electricity? David Lipschitz explores this in his exciting, electrifying, shocking, and powerful thriller, The Last Blackout. BLACKOUT It's a rainy winter's day in Cape Town. I wake up to find load shedding is happening. There was no warning, and I looked forward to breakfast with a close friend.Load shedding is our South African Electricity Utility, Eskom's name for planned power interruptions. It happens when more power stations are off than planned.I open my EskomSePush app, and there is no news. I load Twitter and look at the Eskom feed. No news.I go to the bathroom to wash and find no water pressure. I try to flush the toilet, which flushes but does not fill.How odd!I go snack something, open the fridge for some butter or milk and discover that the fridge is a bit warmer than expected. The butter is a bit soft. How long have we been off, I wonder?I went to sleep at 9.30 pm and woke at 6 am, as usual.I look at my phone again and realize there is no signal. This usually only happens at Stage 4 or 5, and I think that maybe it's because the generators have run out of fuel."Maybe we've been off since 1 am", I think.Then I notice the eerie silence. Normally during load shedding, some people's burglar alarms go off as batteries start going flat. "Nothing?"I switch on my laptop, with its own battery. "No internet".I phone a friend across town who is never off at the same time as me. He's also off!Then I phone my friends in other cities, and they're also off. I start getting worried.I've been distracted recently by lockouts, the latest international war news, the newest possible pandemic, and I've just finished reading Vaccine Epidemic and Empire of Pain, and I've been spending too much time in confusion wondering where fake news is coming from. Is it possible that these are half-truths? True some of the time, but not all the time?It's 7.30 am by now, and I can't get hold of my friend.I manually open my garage door, get the car out, and think I'll meet my friend at the coffee shop. I get to the first big intersection and discover that those traffic lights, which always work, even during load shedding, are off, and traffic is beginning to build.I'm really getting worried now. I decide to go back home and pass my local shop. They have a generator but are in darkness. Candles burn, and there's a big sign saying "50% off all cold and frozen food".I go inside to chat to