What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in North America. The world will never be the same again.
Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse. But then her newly hopeful world is threatened.
If civilization was lost, what would you preserve? And how far would you go to protect it?bly, Hamlet.
Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award
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Detail
Author: Emily St John Mandel
Format: Paperback
Size: 131 mm x 197 mm
Pages: 352
Staff Review:
I loved this book! A story set in a post-apocalyptic world - where 99% of humanity has been killed off by a rampant virus - may not seem to have much to do with Shakespeare, yet Shakespeare’s works are at its heart.
The book begins with a fading actor dying on-stage while performing as King Lear, meanwhile a deadly virus has arrived, and hospitals are becoming overrun with the sick. 20 years later we follow a group of nomadic actors and musicians, the Travelling Symphony, as they wend their way around the North American Great Lakes, performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the small communities founded by survivors of the virus.
The book presents a very different post-apocalyptic world to the zombie-infested stories we’re all used to seeing. It is a world of quiet and melancholy, combined with occasional violence and frightening beliefs. It draws the reader in and illustrates in several ways how culture, from Shakespeare to comic books, provides an anchor in a shattered world.
Reviewed by Meghan (Head of Retail)
