Station Eleven

'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' – George R.R. Martin, author of Game of ThronesNow an HBO Max original TV series The New York Times BestsellerWinner of the Arthur C. Clarke AwardLonglisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction National Book Awards FinalistPEN/Faulkner Award FinalistWhat 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?

Mandel’s beautiful depiction of the survival of human culture and art in a post-apocalyptic world, Perfect for fans of The Handmaid’s Tale., The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t the only one out there to examine life in a dystopia or collapsing society, or examine the challenges women face when confronting an authoritative power., A dystopian novel that every woman should read after The Handmaid’s Tale., Glorious, unexpected, superbly written; just try putting it down., One of the 2014 books that I did read stands above all the others, however: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel . . . It's a deeply melancholy novel, but beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac, a book that I will long remember, and return to.

Emily St. John Mandel was born in Canada and studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. She is the author of the novels Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, The Lola Quartet and Station Eleven and is a staff writer for The Millions. She lives in New York City.

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