Afterland
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Children of Men meets The Handmaid's Tale in this timely thriller about how far a mother will go to protect her son from a hostile world transformed by the absence of men.
Most of the men are dead. Three years after the pandemic known as The Manfall, governments still hold and life continues—but a world run by women isn't always a better place.
Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence-and pursued by Cole's own ruthless sister, Billie—all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won't be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home.
To get there, Cole and Miles must journey across a changed America in disguise as mother and daughter. From a military base in Seattle to a luxury bunker, from an anarchist commune in Salt Lake City to a roaming cult that's all too ready to see Miles as the answer to their prayers, the two race to stay ahead at every step ... even as Billie and her sinister crew draw closer.
A sharply feminist, high-stakes thriller from award-winning author Lauren Beukes, Afterland brilliantly blends psychological suspense, American noir, and science fiction into an adventure all its own—and perfect for our times.
“A smartly written thriller that opens with a satisfying bang ... Beukes is all about turning assumptions and expectations upside down ... Think of a world where Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have gone to their reward, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg keeps on trucking. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?” ―Stephen King, New York Times Book Review
“Beukes is such an idiosyncratic writer—one who deftly mashes up suspense, sci-fi, horror, time travel, and, yes, dystopian fiction—that she’s hard to ignore ... Beukes imbues what could have simply been a sensational thriller with psychological depth and sharp detail. For those whose taste for dystopian suspense is undiminished, Beukes’s tale of a mother and son making their way across a post-pandemic-ravaged landscape is prescient and taut." ―Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this intriguing and all too timely near-future thriller from South African author Beukes (The Shining Girls), human culgoa virus, "a highly contagious flu that turns into an aggressive prostate cancer in men and boys," kills more than 99% of the world's male population within six months of its outbreak. The global response to the disease includes a ban on pregnancies until science can prevent the virus from afflicting future generations. Miles, a healthy 12 year old, has been held by the Department of Men in California's Napa Valley, where healthy young males are being guarded for their safety, until his mother, Cole, frees him in a violent encounter that leaves her sister, Billie, seriously injured. Cole disguises Miles as a girl, and they embark on a perilous odyssey aimed at escaping the U.S. for Cole's native South Africa. After Billie recovers, she sets off in pursuit of Cole and Miles so that she can sell her nephew's sperm for millions on the black market. Though Beukes's worldbuilding isn't on the level of The Handmaid's Tale, in which a pandemic renders most women infertile, this is a worthy addition to the pandemic fiction subgenre.
