The Year of the Flood: A Novel

Profoundly imagined. . . . This is a gutsy and expansive novel, rich with ideas and conceits.

--Publishers Weekly, starred review

Atwood's mischievous, suspenseful, and sagacious dystopian novel follows the trajectory of current environmental debacles to a shattering possible conclusion with passionate concern and arch humor.

--Booklist, starred review

Iconic Canadian author Margaret Atwood has once again written about a distressingly near future in which mass murder may be the best way to save the world.

--Ms. Magazine

Another stimulating dystopia from this always-provocative author, whose complex, deeply involving characters inhabit a bizarre yet frighteningly believable future.

--Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Oryx and Crake:

Oyrx and Crake is a cautionary tale about humanity swept downriver on a raft.

--Mel Gussow, New York Times

The novel's tantalizing questions will have readers turning the pages of this extraordinary book as fast as humanly possible. . . . Like Orwell and Huxley before her, Atwood takes the world as we know it and suggests scenarios both frightening and all-too-probable . . .

Brilliant, provocative, sumptuous and downright terrifying, Oryx and Crake is a sharp-edged down-and-dirty page-turner with a deftly wrought message in Atwood's smart electric language.

--Victoria Brownworth, Baltimore Sun

A dystopian novel is not intended as a literal forecast, or even necessarily as a logical extension of our current world. It is simply, and not so simply, a bad dream of our present time, an exquisitely designed horror show in which things are changed from what we do know to a dream version of what we don't. . . . Atwood does Orwell one better . . . A towering and intrepid new novel.

--Lorrie Moore, The New Yorker

A landmark work of speculative fiction, comparable to A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, and We. Atwood has surpassed herself.

--Kirkus Reviews

Chesterton once wrote of the 'thousand romances that lie secreted in The Origin of Species.' Atwood has extracted one of the most hair-raising of them, and one of the most brilliant. . . . A potential dystopian classic.

--Publishers Weekly

From the Hardcover edition.

When a natural disaster predicted by God's Gardeners leader Adam One obliterates most human life, two survivors trapped inside respective establishments that metaphorically represent paradise and hell wonder if any of their loved ones have survived, while the outside world is overcome by gene-spliced life forms.

Set in the visionary future of Atwood’s acclaimed Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood is at once a moving tale of lasting friendship and a landmark work of speculative fiction. In this second book of the MaddAddam trilogy, the long-feared waterless flood has occurred, altering Earth as we know it and obliterating most human life. Among the survivors are Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Amid shadowy, corrupt ruling powers and new, gene-spliced life forms, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can't stay locked away.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

MARGARET ATWOOD is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her novels include The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye, Alias Grace, Oryx and Crake, and The Blind Assassin, which won the Man Booker Prize. In 2008 she was awarded Spain's Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature.

The garden — The year of the flood — Creation day — The feast of Adam and all primates — The festival of arks — Saint Euell of wild foods — Mole day — April fish — The feast of serpent wisdom — Pollination day — Saint Dian, martyr — Predator day — Saint Rachel and all birds — Saint Terry and all wayfarers — Saint Julian and all souls.