num_pages: 378
description: "In the beginning, there was chaos..." Margaret Atwood's chilling new novel Oryx and Crake moves beyond the futuristic fantasy of her 1985 bestseller The Handmaid's Tale to an even more dystopian world, a world where language--and with it anything beyond the merest semblance of humanity--has almost entirely vanished.  Snowman may be the last man on earth, the only survivor of an unnamed apocalypse. Once he was Jimmy, a member of a scientific elite; now he lives in bitter isolation and loneliness, his only pleasure the watching of old films on DVD. His mind moves backwards and forwards through time, from an agonising trawl through memory to relive the events that led up to sudden catastrophe (most significantly the disappearance of his mother and the arrival of his mysterious childhood companions Oryx and Crake, symbols of the fractured society in which Snowman now finds himself, to the horrifying present of genetic engineering run amok. His only witnesses, eager to lap up his testimony, are "Crakers", laboratory creatures of varying strengths and abilities, who can offer little comfort. Gradually the reasons behind the disaster begin to unfold as Snowman undertakes a perilous journey to the remains of the bubble-dome complex where the sinister Paradice Project collapsed and near-global devastation began.  This, Atwood's 11th novel, confirms her as one of our most contemporary novelists. Darkly humorous and icily prescient, Oryx and Crake shows a writer deeply concerned with the stark moral issues facing the human race, and accords a glimpse of a future that lies all too uneasily within reach. --Catherine Taylor
language: English
title: Oryx and Crake
titlecomplete: Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)
characters: Oryx, Snowman, Crake
genres: Audiobook, Canada, Dystopia, Novels, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Post Apocalyptic, Fantasy, Fiction, Speculative Fiction
ratings_count: 260025
series: MaddAddam
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Shortlist, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Sunburst Award
category: Canadian Novel, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Scotiabank Giller Prize, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire
category: Roman étranger
publisher: Bloomsbury