Afterland, Lauren Beukes
Afterland, Lauren Beukes
1 Rating(s)
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
Club: $15.99

Afterland

Author: Lauren Beukes

Narrator: Bianca Amato

Unabridged: 14 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/28/2020


Synopsis

Children of Men meets The Handmaid's Tale in this "smartly written" and "splendid" thriller about how far a mother will go to protect her son from a hostile world transformed by the absence of men (Stephen King).

Most of the men are dead. Three years after the pandemic known as The Manfall, governments still hold and life continues—but a world run by women isn't always a better place.

Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence-and pursued by Cole's own ruthless sister, Billie—all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won't be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home.

To get there, Cole and Miles must journey across a changed America in disguise as mother and daughter. From a military base in Seattle to a luxury bunker, from an anarchist commune in Salt Lake City to a roaming cult that's all too ready to see Miles as the answer to their prayers, the two race to stay ahead at every step . . . even as Billie and her sinister crew draw closer.

A sharply feminist, high-stakes thriller from award-winning author Lauren Beukes, Afterland brilliantly blends psychological suspense, American noir, and science fiction into an adventure all its own—and perfect for our times.

About Lauren Beukes

Lauren Beukes writes novels, comics and screeplays. She's the author of the critically-acclaimed international best-seller, The Shining Girls, about a time traveling serial killer, Zoo City, a phantasmagorical Joburg noir which won the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award, the neo political thriller, Moxyland. She worked as a journalist and as show runner on one of the South Africa's biggest animated TV shows, directed an award-winning documentary and wrote the New York Times best-selling graphic novel, Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on September 22, 2020

”’And you’re returning to South Africa after your vacation?’ ‘Yes, that’s where we live,’ proud of the fact of it. Away from everyday Nazis and school shootings so regular they were practically part of the academic calendar along with prom and football season, away from the slow gutting of democracy,......more

Goodreads review by Gerhard on April 26, 2020

If Broken Monsters was Lauren Beukes’s great Clive Barker novel, then Afterland is her great Stephen King novel. By the way, I personally hate it when blurbs state breathlessly that if you loved ‘x’ by ‘y’ … then this is JUST the book for you because it is MORE of the same! Beukes has carved a niche......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on September 28, 2020

Afterland is an okay dystopian story. Somewhat of a rehash of the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man. How much knowledge Beukes had of that story or if she was influenced by it at all, I cannot say. But it is the same basic idea and premise. A virus wipes out all (or most) men and this is the afte......more

Goodreads review by Tania on May 03, 2020

"You can’t imagine how much the world can change in six months. You just can’t." Except that, now, of course we all can... 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. I’ve read all of Lauren Beukes novels and my favorites are Zoo City and The Shining Girls. The thing I love most about this South African au......more

Goodreads review by Bradley on June 16, 2020

By now, a lot of us have read a lot of dystopias featuring sexual politics, often accompanied with some major disaster that leaves women a huge minority (The Book of Etta) or (The White Plague) or any number of bigger named modern authors. This one flips the script. Men are seriously endangered. The......more


Quotes

Named one of the Hottest Books of the SummerGoodreads * Entertainment Weekly * Good Housekeeping * Milwaukee Journal Sentinel * Publishers Weekly * PopSugar * Literary Hub * CrimeReads

"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

"Part thriller, part science fiction, and all amazing"—Good Housekeeping

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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