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Lauren Beukes

Afterland Kindle Edition

by Lauren Beukes (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

474 ratings

Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

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Children of Men meets The Handmaid's Tale in this "smartly written" and "splendid" thriller about how far a mother will go to protect her son from a hostile world transformed by the absence of men (Stephen King).

Most of the men are dead. Three years after the pandemic known as The Manfall, governments still hold and life continues—but a world run by women isn't always a better place.

Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence-and pursued by Cole's own ruthless sister, Billie—all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won't be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home.

To get there, Cole and Miles must journey across a changed America in disguise as mother and daughter. From a military base in Seattle to a luxury bunker, from an anarchist commune in Salt Lake City to a roaming cult that's all too ready to see Miles as the answer to their prayers, the two race to stay ahead at every step . . . even as Billie and her sinister crew draw closer.

A sharply feminist, high-stakes thriller from award-winning author Lauren Beukes, Afterland brilliantly blends psychological suspense, American noir, and science fiction into an adventure all its own—and perfect for our times.

Print length

417 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Mulholland Books
Publication date

July 28, 2020
File size

1637 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“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

"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

“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

“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

"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

"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

"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

"Timely and unsettling."―Time

"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

“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

"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

“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

"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

“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

"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 --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Lauren Beukes is the author of the international sensation The Shining Girls, a novel that has been translated into 26 languages. Her other books include Moxyland, Maverick, Broken Monsters, and Zoo City, winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award. She has worked in journalism, satire, documentary-making and children’s tv, and writes comics for DC Vertigo. She lives in Cape Town. www.laurenbeukes.com --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B078W5YBH2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mulholland Books (July 28, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 28, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1637 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 417 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #453,298 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #125 in Crime & Mystery Science Fiction
- #1,551 in Technothrillers (Books)
- #3,353 in Dystopian Fiction

Customer Reviews:
474 ratings

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Lauren Beukes

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Lauren Beukes is a novelist, TV scriptwriter, documentary maker, comics

writer and occasional journalist.

She won the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award for her novel Zoo City, set in a

fantastical Johannesburg where guilt manifests as spirit animal familiars. Her

previous works include Moxyland, a dystopian cyberpunk thriller set in Cape

Town under corporate apartheid.

She helped create South Africa's first half-hour animated TV show, URBO: The

Adventures of Pax Afrika, and has written kids animated shows for Disney

UK and Millimages in France.

Follow her on Twitter: @laurenbeukes

Photo © Casey Crafford

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

474 global ratings

5 star		35%
4 star		32%
3 star		20%
2 star		9%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Sharon

Entertaining but not an easy read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 13, 2022

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I am a Lauren Beukes fan. Mostly because she creates worlds that are strangely familiar to my beloved Johannesburg; and because she creates complex characters I am interested in and often care about.

I read Afterland two years into the COVID pandemic. In setting up the context through flashbacks and mockumentary snippets, the book triggered occasional contradictory emotions of too-soon and tedium. Despite my twinges of irritation, the storyline was compelling and the pace was unrelenting, holding my attention until the last page. The frantic flight of an unravelling tiger-mom, Cole, and last-tweenboy-standing, Miles, across the US is described beautifully and there are rich moments of interaction with places and people.

I did wish that I was more sympathetic towards the main protagonists. My favourite character in the whole book was the ghost-of-Devon whose teasing, imagined commentary kept Cole going through the toughest circumstances.

All in all, this is a recommended read for escapism, but don’t expect it to be light or easy.

One person found this helpful

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Josh Mauthe

An interesting premise wasted on an only so-so thriller

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 13, 2022

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What was it in the air before 2020 that led to so, so, so many pandemic novels? Whatever it was, add Lauren Beukes’s Afterland into the mix, giving us a world where almost the entire male population has been wiped out, and a widowed mother is on the run, trying to protect her son from those who would use him to make a killing. There’s neat ideas here, including the gradual ways that masculine jobs shift their definition, or how reproduction evolves in a world where it’s all but impossible. Frustratingly, though, Afterland uses almost all of that as little more than a backdrop for a somewhat generic thriller, giving us glimpses of interesting ideas but setting them aside for a surprisingly uninteresting villain and a cult that never really comes to life in a satisfying way. I’ve really enjoyed every other Beukes novel I've read, so consider this a fluke; while Afterland is too well-paced and crafted to ever be bad, there’s a sense of wasted potential here that never really went away for me.

One person found this helpful

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Vincent Miskell

Five-Star Novel with Great Characters

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 14, 2022

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Afterland is a well-developed and well thought-out novel with great characters. Yes, its setting is after a devastating pandemic that kills most of the human males on the planet, but it focuses on a woman (Cole) on the run with her (disguised as a girl) 12-year-old son. They’re pursued by Feds and her sociopathic sister Billie—all across America.

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May Defarge

Remarkably well-written and fascinating on every page!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 12, 2020

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When I read a review of this book in the NYTimes, I was not sure that it was something that I would want to read. However, when I found the book on Amazon, I read at least 20 pages of the "Look Inside" and was captured by the structure of the the author's writing before I knew that I had to read this book. It touches so many facets of life from a death of a loved one, a mother raising a child alone, family expectations, and dealing with prejudice in a world gone mad. The pandemic in this story is not what we are facing now, but the reactions to it from the society that exists in this story is frighteningly real. The relationship of the mother and her son is what keeps the reader turning pages to find out what will they do next. I read this in one day, and I may read it again. Lauren Beukes is an author that is a unique storyteller, and I will read more of her books.

4 people found this helpful

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GFE

Intriguing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 2, 2020

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Definitely an intriguing premise. I found it hard to engage with some of the characters (the “bad sister” and her posse were completely unlikeable), but the story was compelling, and the fate of the protagonists kept me reading. I would have liked more character development of some of the secondary characters, and more insight into the new world order. For such a dark subject, the writing is often humorous and filled with clever pop culture references (like using the pseudonyms “Edina” and “Patsy”, and the sex bar called Barbarella!). I will look forward to reading more by this author!

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Andres

Amazing writer, not great premise

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 15, 2020

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Really enjoy lauren's writing style, but this story just felt like it was missing something. If you're a fan of her work, this won't be your favorite read, but her writing style is enough to keep you engaged to the end. Realllllllly enjoyed the intermission section. Very clever

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JD

This book's downfall is it feels like it was written as a movie script.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 19, 2021

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This book started really strong with an interesting premise: it's the end of the world and it's run by women and the men that survive are rare. But about a third of the way in, you start to realize the writer is writing for a movie, and for a movie only. It goes real The Handmaid's Tale, too. But even that cannot save it.

I found myself speeding through the book just to be done with it. The totally predictable ending made me feel like a sucker for believing the NPR review that made me buy this book. I also do not feel motivated to read anything else by the author, because this book was so poorly developed with the plot, the characters... everything.

3 people found this helpful

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Connor Kelley

In a world without men, life can be just as dangerous

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 19, 2020

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It felt like her modern day take on The Stand, but in a completely original way. I loved...well not loved because I would be one of the men affected by the flu, but the world she created without men was fascinating, adding faux masculinity to a world that no has and needs men. It felt very Margaret Atwood as well as Naomi Alderman's The Power. Lauren always has written fascinating books and I've been a fan for a long time.

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Top reviews from other countries

Yanne

Loved it - I feel better about "right now"

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 8, 2020

Verified Purchase

Despite this feeling a little surreal (I read it in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic), it made me feel a lot better about the current world situation. As in: it could be so much worse.
This book kept me gripped, with all its lovable, hateable and entirely relateable characters and, in the light of this current pandemic, very beleiveable storyline.

4 people found this helpful

Megan Taylor

Very enjoyable!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 19, 2021

Verified Purchase

A fast, fun, tense read