The narrator of Margaret Atwood’s riveting new novel is Snowman, self-named though not self-created. As the story begins, he’s sleeping in a tree, wearing a dirty old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beautiful and beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death.

Earlier, Snowman’s life was one of comparative privilege. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Was he himself in any way responsible? Why is he now left alone with his bizarre memories — alone except for the more-than-perfect 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.

Atwood projects a less than brave new world, an outlandish yet wholly believable space populated by a cast of characters who will continue to inhabit your dreams long after the final chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.

Click here to buy the UK edition from Bloomsbury.com, at a discount.
Click here for details about the audio book, read by Alex Jennings.
Click here to buy the paperback from Virago
Click here to buy other books by Margaret Atwood from Bloombury.com.