Oryx and Crake

A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize.

Margaret Atwood's new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it.

This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again.

The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where 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 he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the 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 will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.

"Majestic....Keep[s] us on the edges of our seats." The Washington Post

"[I]ngenious and disturbing....A landmark work of speculative fiction, comparable to A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, and Russian revolutionary Zamyatin's We. Atwood has surpassed herself." Kirkus Reviews

"Towering and intrepid....Atwood does Orwell one better." New Yorker

"Set in a future some two generations hence, Oryx and Crake can hold its own against any of the 20th century's most potent dystopias — Brave New World, 1984, The Space Merchants — with regard to both dramatic impact and fertility of invention, while it leaves such lesser recent contenders as Paul Theroux and Doris Lessing in the dust." Washington Post

"Atwood has long since established herself as one of the best writers in English today, but Oryx and Crake may well be her best work yet.... Brilliant, provocative, sumptuous and downright terrifying." Baltimore Sun

A new work by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace is set in a future world that has been devastated by a series of ecological and scientific disasters. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 100,000 first printing.

Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in aworld where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey-with the help ofthe green-eyed Children of Crake-through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects usinto a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Margaret Atwood’s books have been published in over thirty-five countries. She is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, her novels include Cat’s Eye – shortlisted for the Booker Prize;Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; and her most recent, The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize. She lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson. Oryx and Crake is her eleventh novel.

Mango — Flotsam — Voice — Bonfire — OrganInc Farms — Lunch — Nooners — Downspur — Rakunk — Hammer — Crake — Brainfrizz — HottTotts — Toast — Fish — Bottle — Oryx — Birdcall — Rose — Pixieland Jazz — Sveltana — Purring — Blue — So yummie — Happicuppa — Applied rhetoric — Asperger's U. — Volvogs — Hypothetical — Extinctathon — Hike — RejoovenEssense — Twister — Vulturizing — Anno Yoo — Garage — Gripless — Pigeons — Radio — Rampart — Pleebcrawl — BlyssPluss — MaddAddam — Paradise — Crake in love — akeout — Airlock — Bubble — Scribble — Remnant — Idol — Sermon — Footprint.