Afterland

Reviews

"A post-pandemic gender-spun thriller that's sharp-as-a-pin and manages both urgency and relevancy in equal measure. Gripping prose from the first page that made me want to be a better writer. Beukes always moves to the top of my must-read list."—Chuck Wendig, author of national bestseller Wanderers "Bowstring-taut, visceral, and incredibly timely: Beukes's plague-tale is a parable about the glory and terror of Americanism in times of calamity."—Cory Doctorow, author of Walkaway and Little Brother "Deeply compelling . . . I haven't been able to stop thinking about Afterland. Beukes brings a deep tenderness to the tangle of humanity that comes with widespread grief and clumsy attempts at coping with the weight of loss. This is really something special."—Sarah Gailey, author of Upright Women Wanted and Magic For Liars "A harrowing tale that ably explores grief, motherhood, and gender roles . . . Beukes is a gifted storyteller who makes it thrillingly easy for readers to fall under her spell as she weaves a hypnotic vision of a fractured world without men. A propulsive and all-too-timely near-future thriller."—Kirkus Reviews "I'm an enormous fan of Lauren Beukes. She's an endlessly interesting writer, able to bend and weld genre to ask provocative questions and bring light to the shadows of the human condition. Afterland is a thoroughly gripping, imaginative thriller about a mother protecting her son, a rare survivor of a devastating plague that wiped out most of Earth's male population. In this new world, women exercise power for and against each other--the power of love, the power of violence, unleashed in the absence of men."
—Steph Cha, author of Your House Will Pay "Part thriller, part science fiction, and all amazing"—Good Housekeeping "A timely postapocalyptic tale"—PopSugar "Beukes nails the speed of the unraveling, and the strangeness of living in a suddenly altered world. I hope none of the rest of it comes true."—Emily Temple, Lit Hub "Lauren Beukes is a writer with a startling imagination, and a masterful ability to rewrite the rules of whatever genre she turns to; and now, right on time, she has turned to dystopian plague."—Ben Winters, author of Underground Airlines and Golden State "Eerily relevant . . . Beukes' tender, insightful treatment of the relationship between mother and son is significant, and the interplay between feuding sisters is fascinating, as well."—Booklist Named one of the Hottest Books of the Summer