MaddAddam

A man-made plague has swept the earth, but a small group survives, along with the green-eyed Crakers - a gentle species bio-engineered to replace humans. Toby, onetime member of the God's Gardeners and expert in mushrooms and bees, is still in love with street-smart Zeb, who has an interesting past. The Crakers' reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is hallucinating; Amanda is in shock from a Painballer assault; and Ivory Bill yearns for the provocative Swift Fox, who is flirting with Zeb. Meanwhile, giant Pigoons and malevolent Painballers threaten to attack. Told with wit, dizzying imagination, and dark humour, Booker Prize-winning Margaret Atwood's unpredictable, chilling and hilarious MaddAddam takes us further into a challenging dystopian world - a moving and dramatic conclusion to the internationally celebrated trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. Margaret Atwood also has the really fine writer's light-footed ability to keep dancing around her characters...moving, but also very funny ... MaddAddam is an extraordinary achievement Independent on Sunday A haunting, restless triumph ... Deadpan wit, intellectual sizzle and sensuous immediacy - Atwood's fictional trademarks - run through the teeming inventiveness of the novel's pre-disaster episodes Sunday Times This final volume deploys its author's trademark cool, omniscient satire, but adds to that a real sense of engagement with a fallen world. Atwood has created something reminiscent to Shakespeare's late comedies; her wit and dark humour combine with a compassionate tenderness towards struggling human beings ... Since almost everything in the world has been broken or has broken down, the novels' form, whirling as brilliantly as the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, or the pixels in a complex computer game, seems simply to replicate that chaos. However, behind the apparent disorder Atwood the conjuror remains in firm control, juggling her narrative techniques with postmodern glee Independent Sure to be a success Independent on Sunday There are few writers able to create a world so fiercely engaging, so funny, so teeming - ironically - with life. MaddAddam is ultimately a paean to the enduring powers of myth and story, and like the sharpest futuristic visions, it's really all about the here and now -- Hephzibah Anderson Daily Mail MaddAddam is remarkable for enacting the transition from oral to written history within a fictional universe - one complete with myths and false gods ... MaddAddam is the work of a wild, subversive writer who has looked long and hard at her craft TLS If you want complete escapism this summer, Margaret Atwood fans will not be disappointed with Maddaddam Woman's Way MaddAddam is an extraordinary achievement. Atwood's body of work will last precisely because she has told us about ourselves Independent on Sunday Atwood has created something reminiscent to Shakespeare's late comedies; her wit and dark humour combine with a compassionate tenderness toward struggling human beings ... Atwood's story ends intensely movingly, with the damaged world potentially renewed through storytelling, through writing -- Michele Roberts Independent A haunting, restless triumph ... A writer of virtuoso diversity, with an imagination that responds as keenly to scientific concerns as it does to the literary heritage in which she is steeped ... A dystopia over which Atwood sets swirling a glitterball of different kinds of fiction Sunday Times There is much that is bleak and terrifying in Atwood's fiction, but it is leavened by her humour ... MaddAddam is remarkable for enacting the transition from oral to written history within a fictional universe - one complete with myths and false gods ... the work of a wild, subversive writer who has looked long and hard at her craft TLS It may have been a decade in the making, but it has been well worth the wait ... Margaret Atwood not only completes one of the most harrowing visions of a near-future dystopia in recent fiction, but lures us even further into new zones of existential terror -- John Burnside The Times One of the most important writers in English today Germaine Greer Margaret Atwood is the quiet Mata Hari, the mysterious, violent figure ... who pits herself against the ordered, too clean world like an arsonist Michael Ondaatje It's easy to appreciate the grand array of Margaret Atwood's works ... in all their power and grace and variety. When I think of it, and put it together with her writerly gifts and achievements, it takes my breath away Alice Munro Atwood is a poet. Scarcely a sentence of her quick, dry yet avid prose fails to do useful work John Updike She may be deadly serious but she is also seriously funny -- Alan Taylor Glasgow Herald A trilogy set in a dystopian America some decades in the future, depicting - graphically, satirically, brilliantly - an environmental disaster -- Ruth Franklin Prospect Not since the Cold War has the end of the world been so chic ... Just when you think you are suffering from apocalypse fatigue, along comes Margaret Atwood to wipe the floor with the limp, lame competition and inject new life into the genre ... Atwood is one of the world's finest and funniest living writers. This is a brilliantly realised, needle-sharp and imaginative novel. What more could you want? -- Craig Purshouse New Humanist Her writing casts spells ...She is prolific -- Tom Adair Scotsman The MaddAddam trilogy shows a master artificer inventing nothing less than a cosmogony, one shining constellation at a time -- Sarah Churchwell New Statesman The final book in Atwood's MaddAddam sci-fi trilogy confirms her as the arch-prophet of global catastrophe ... It's exciting stuff ... The book masterfully evokes a doomed civilisation, and raises intriguing questions about the boundaries of science and the nature of religion -- Anthony Gardner Mail on Sunday Atwood is the master of this genre and her incredible imagination continues to hold the black mirror up against the technological forces which might drive us to destruction Stylist A wonderful and justly venerated novelist -- Theo Tait Guardian A blinding piece of writing -- Andrzej Lukowski Metro Unsettling, funny and savagely satirical Irish Times Written with admirable energy and bravura -- Justin Cartwright Observer Darkly funny Vogue