I had long known of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series, and while I had seen and enjoyed the film, I'd never read any of the writer's work. Indeed, while I read a great deal of science fiction when I was younger, I tend these days toward literary fiction. But something compelled me to dive into the first book of the Southern Reach series, and it did not disappoint. The writing is evocative and strong, painting an almost esoteric picture of a mystery equal parts science, psychology, anthropology, and societal. It is by turns intriguing and haunting.
THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY - NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC
For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border - an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.
The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.
Albert Camus's The Plague feels like a book out of time. Clearly, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has left people worldwide with an understanding of what a virulent contagion can do when it sweeps across a community. Indeed, some of the novel's contents seem prescient. Coupled with the inherent philosophy embodied in the book, the tale makes for a forceful read.
“Its relevance lashes you across the face.” —Stephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times • “A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Washington Post
A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they…
This is my first taste of John Boyne's work, and so I did not know that this book followed up his earlier The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I had not read that novel, but I had seen and liked the film based upon it. This later work provides a solid standalone story that impressed me enough to then read the first tale, which also satisfied.
'Beautifully told and gripping from first page to last' Sunday Express 'An incredible feat of storytelling... and an old-fashioned page-turner' Donal Ryan 'Gripping and well-honed...consummately constructed, humming with tension' Guardian 'You can't prepare yourself for the magnitude and emotional impact of this powerful novel' John Irving ________________________________
From the author of the globally bestselling, multi-million-copy classic, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, comes its astonishing and powerful sequel.
Gretel Fernsby is a quiet woman leading a quiet life. She doesn't talk about her escape from Germany seventy years ago or the dark post-war years in France with her mother. Most…
The year is 2311. It is a year of infamy, a year that later generations will remember as one that altered the course of history at the cost of thousands of lives. It is the year of the Tomed Incident, and its tale can at last be told. In the midst of escalating political tensions among the Klingons, the Romulans, and the Federation, Starfleet goes forward with the inaugural flight of Universe, a prototype starship that promises to revolutionize space exploration. But the Universe experiment results in disaster, ravaging a region of space dangerously close to the Romulan Star Empire, apparently confirming suspicions that the Federation has begun testing a weapon of mass destruction. As the military buildup accelerates on both sides of the Neutral Zone, Captain John Harriman of the Federation flagship U.S.S. Enterprise is fated for a final confrontation with his oldest enemy at a flashpoint in history—with the Beta Quadrant one wrong move from the outbreak of total war.
