05/18/2020
In this intriguing and all too timely near-future thriller from South African author Beukes (The Shining Girls), human culgoa virus, “a highly contagious flu that turns into an aggressive prostate cancer in men and boys,” kills more than 99% of the world’s male population within six months of its outbreak. The global response to the disease includes a ban on pregnancies until science can prevent the virus from afflicting future generations. Miles, a healthy 12 year old, has been held by the Department of Men in California’s Napa Valley, where healthy young males are being guarded for their safety, until his mother, Cole, frees him in a violent encounter that leaves her sister, Billie, seriously injured. Cole disguises Miles as a girl, and they embark on a perilous odyssey aimed at escaping the U.S. for Cole’s native South Africa. After Billie recovers, she sets off in pursuit of Cole and Miles so that she can sell her nephew’s sperm for millions on the black market. Though Beukes’s worldbuilding isn’t on the level of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which a pandemic renders most women infertile, this is a worthy addition to the pandemic fiction subgenre. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath Literary (U.K.). (July)
Named one of the Hottest Books of the Summer
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“A smartly written thriller that opens with a satisfying bang . . . Beukes is all about turning assumptions and expectations upside down. . . . Think of a world where Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have gone to their reward, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg keeps on trucking. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?” —Stephen King, New York Times Book Review
"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
"Beukes's imagined world [is] a thrilling setting for an examination of maternal love."—Joumana Khatib, New York Times
“Beukes is such an idiosyncratic writer — one who deftly mashes up suspense, sci-fi, horror, time travel, and, yes, dystopian fiction — that she’s hard to ignore. . . . Beukes imbues what could have simply been a sensational thriller with psychological depth and sharp detail. For those whose taste for dystopian suspense is undiminished, Beukes’s tale of a mother and son making their way across a post-pandemic-ravaged landscape is prescient and taut.”—Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post
“A post-apocalyptic thrill-ride."—O, The Oprah Magazine
"Timely and unsettling."—Time
“A gripping work of speculative fiction. . . . In today’s world, Beukes’ feminist dystopia of contagion, police brutality, and religious extremism hits frighteningly close to home.”—Esquire
"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
“If you’re ready for a wild ride across an America forever changed by a devastating pandemic, climb aboard . . . It’s a lot — but it’s also a lot of fun.”—Boston Globe
"Part thriller, part science fiction, and all amazing"—Good Housekeeping
"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
"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
“Beukes has stitched together the surprise matriarchy of The Power, the millenarian despair of Children of Men and the deeply intelligent questions of Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. . . Afterland is that rare creature, a ripping tale that neither shies away from big questions nor interesting answers.” —New Scientist
"While the prose in Afterland is playful (think puns and pop culture references), Beukes utilizes the characters’ milieu to explore climate change, police brutality, and violations of bodily integrity."—Electric Lit
“Set in a near-future that eerily resonates with our present pandemic, Afterland is not only an intriguing thought experiment, but a riveting read.”—Shondaland
“With remarkable prescience, Afterland takes on an 'unprecedented global pandemic' with chilling results—and surprising comic relief threaded throughout. . . . This pandemic distraction is ready for worldly audiences, offering titillating thrills, schadenfreude and, most surprisingly (and necessarily), even a few take-me-away snorts and shrieks.” —ShelfAwareness
"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
“Afterland becomes a fierce love story, one that maps the treacherous roads a mother will travel to protect her child.” —High Country News
"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
"A timely postapocalyptic tale"—PopSugar
"Intriguing and all too timely . . . Fans of high-concept feminist SF thrillers will be enthralled. . . . A worthy addition to the pandemic fiction subgenre."—Publishers Weekly
06/12/2020
Beukes (Broken Monsters) pens a painfully plausible plague novel set three years after Manfall, a cancer-causing virus that killed 99 percent of the males worldwide. Women run the world now, reproduction is a crime, and the few remaining males are either in hiding or under government "protection." One such male is 12-year-old Miles, who is held at a U.S. military base, along with his mother, Cole, and her sister, Billie. Cole and Billie plot to escape with Miles and go to South Africa, where they're from. Cole learns that Billie has more nefarious plans for her son, and after a violent confrontation, she and Miles hit the road, with Miles posing as her daughter, Mila. On their perilous journey, they encounter allies, enemies, and unwitting enablers, including a group of colorfully garbed nuns who believe that repentance will bring back men. They are pursued by a trio of cold-blooded characters who want to sell Miles to the highest bidder. Some characterizations are thin here, but the action and tension are strong, and chapters told from different points of view work well, particularly when Miles is spotlighted. VERDICT Fans of chase novels and postapocalyptic stories will enjoy.—Liz French, Library Journal
Bianca Amato’s performance captures the tension that permeates this near-future story of plague and pursuit. Cole and her 12-year-old son, Miles, are on the run, trying to get from the U.S. to South Africa, their home. Miles is disguised as a girl. He survived a male-killing plague that struck the world a few years earlier and is now quite a valuable commodity. Cole’s ill-intentioned sister is on their trail, and for Miles, puberty and voice change also are growing ever closer. The South African Amato’s performance is excellent. Much of her narration is taut, reflecting the story's high stakes. But there are lighter moments as well, and she captures those nicely. G.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
2020-05-04
It’s been about three years since HCV, a fatal cancer-causing virus targeting men, began sweeping the world.
Now, in 2023, there's no cure in sight and reproduction has been made illegal to cut down on further infections in baby boys. Men and boys are hot commodities to both the interim government and other distinctly unsavory parties, but Cole isn’t about to surrender her 12-year-old son, Miles, who seems to be immune, to anyone. In fact, the only thing she cares about is getting home to Johannesburg, South Africa, but it won’t be easy. While in the U.S. visiting family, Cole’s husband, Devon, died, and Cole and Miles were herded into army quarantine, where Miles, under the auspices of the Male Protection Act, endured a seemingly endless series of tests. But Cole just wants to go home, and soon after they're moved to a new bunker, she and her sister, Billie, who reunited with Cole and Miles at the military base after a job as executive chef on a superyacht went south, hatch an escape plan. But the conniving Billie doesn’t have their best interests in mind, and Cole is forced to resort to violence. Now Cole and Miles, disguised as “Mila,” are on the run. Meanwhile, Billie, sporting a nasty head injury courtesy of a Cole-wielded tire iron, must find Miles and deliver him to the very bad women she works for or they’ll kill her. An already hellish road trip takes a strange turn when Miles and an exhausted Cole, seeking any kind of respite, join up with the nomadic nuns of the Church of All Sorrows, a cultish order that believes men will return if women would only repent for an endless litany of sins. Cole has a plan, but getting to the departure point alive will test her—and her relationship with her son—to the very limit. Miles and his mom form the beating heart of a harrowing tale that ably explores grief, motherhood, and gender roles, and Cole’s struggle to protect Miles as he grapples with coming-of-age in a radically altered world will resonate. 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.
