[1] It is Dukaj's first novel and his homepage described the work as his "debut in English",[2] though several of his short stories (The Golden Galley, 1996, The Iron General, 2010, The Apocrypha of Lem, 2011) have been translated prior to this.

[2] The novel has inspired two Netflix original series: the 2020 Belgian Into the Night, and its 2022 Turkish language spin-off Yakamoz S-245.

[3][4] The novel presents a post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk vision of Earth where biological life has been wiped out, inhabited by robots and mechs, many of which are humans whose consciousness has been digitized in the wake of an extinction event.

[1] The author explained that: "stories such as The Old Axolotl that model an ‘escape from the body’ are born out of a sense of progress as a process of ‘de-animalising’ human beings through science.

"[8] The other major element of the novel is Dukaj's attempts to introduce the reader to the new style of electronic literature.