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‘Dystopian fantasy is not new territory for Atwood, who has already imagined an alternative version of the future in The Handmaid's Tale. That novel described a world in which women were reduced to the status of breeders and denied the most basic human rights, a prophecy that came true not in the West, where Atwood set it, but in Afghanistan under the Taliban. If that novel was a warning about an anti-feminist backlash, Oryx and Crake is about another set of dangers facing the human race; with its genetically modified viruses, it is particularly resonant during the current Sars outbreak. One of the most impressive features of the novel is how fully imagined this lost world turns out to be, full of details which are at once familiar and strange. It is this sense of projecting current events into the future that gives the novel its power.’ Joan Smith, Observer — in full ‘Blisteringly good ... in her opening salvo, Atwood deploys caustic wit, quick-fire colloquialisms and a deadly readability to knock out certainty after certainty, casting the reader adrift in a world reeling from an unspecified, but clearly cataclysmic disaster. Good novelists build up their worlds with each page, but Atwood works in reverse, consigning another chunk of civilisation to oblivion with each fresh snippet of information ... pitchperfect, personal and often blackly comic.’ Daily Mail
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