Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood's classic novel The Handmaid's Tale is about the future. Now, in Oryx and Crake, the future has changed.

As the story opens, the narrator, who calls himself Snowman, is sleeping in a tree, wearing a dirty old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beautiful and beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. In a world in which science-based corporations have recently taken mankind on an uncontrolled genetic-engineering ride, he now searches for supplies in a wasteland. Insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the Pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is Snowman left with nothing but his bizarre memories - alone except for the more-than-perfect green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster? He explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past and back to Crake's high-tech bubble dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.

With breathtaking command of her shocking material and with her customary sharp wit and dark humor, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who wil continue to inhabit your dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.