Station Eleven - Hardcover

Emily St. John Mandel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1447268962 ISBN 13: 9781447268963

Publisher: Picador, 2014

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the 2014 National Book Awards
Observer Thriller of the Month

DAY ONE
The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb.
News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%.

WEEK TWO
Civilization has crumbled.

YEAR TWENTY
A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe.
But now a new danger looms, and he threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild.

STATION ELEVEN
Moving backwards and forwards in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: famous actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan - warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend Clark; Kirsten, a young actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed 'prophet'.

Thrilling, unique and deeply moving, Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven is a beautiful novel that asks questions about art and fame and about the relationships that sustain us through anything - even the end of the world.

About this title

Review:

Glorious, unexpected, superbly written; just try putting it down. (The Times)

Once in a very long while a book becomes a brand new old friend, a story you never knew you always wanted. Station Eleven is that rare find that feels familiar and extraordinary at the same time, expertly weaving together future and present and past, death and life and Shakespeare. This is truly something special. (Erin Morgenstern, author of THE NIGHT CIRCUS)

Visually stunning, dreamily atmospheric and impressively gripping . . . Station Eleven is not so much about apocalypse as about memory and loss, nostalgia and yearning; the effort of art to deepen our fleeting impressions of the world and bolster our solitude. (Guardian)

'Station Eleven is so compelling, so fearlessly imagined, that I wouldn't have put it down for anything. I think this one is really going to go places.' (Ann Patchett, author of BEL CANTO and STATE OF WONDER)

A beautiful and unsettling book, the action moves between the old and new world, drawing connections between the characters and their pasts and showing the sweetness of life as we know it now and the value of friendship, love and art over all the vehicles, screens and remote controls that have been rendered obsolete. Mandel's skill in portraying her post-apocalyptic world makes her fictional creation seem a terrifyingly real possibility. Apocalyptic stories once offered the reader a scary view of an alternative reality and the opportunity, on putting the book down, to look around gratefully at the real world. This is a book to make its reader mourn the life we still lead and the privileges we still enjoy. (Sunday Express)

Station Eleven is a firework of a novel. Elegantly constructed and packed with explosive beauty, it's full of life and humanity and the aftershock of memory. (Lauren Beukes, author of THE SHINING GIRLS)

There is no shortage of post-apocalyptic thrillers on the shelves these days, but Station Eleven is unusually haunting . . . There is an understated, piercing nostalgia . . . there is humour, amid the collapse . . . and there is Mandel's marvellous creation, the Travelling Symphony, travelling from one scattered gathering of humanity to another . . . There is also a satisfyingly circular mystery, as Mandel unveils neatly, satisfyingly, the links between her disparate characters . . . This book will stay with its readers much longer than more run-of-the-mill thrillers. (Alison Flood, Thriller of the Month Observer)

Station Eleven is a magnificent, compulsive novel that cleverly turns the notion of a "kinder, gentler time" on its head. And, oh, the pleasure of falling down the rabbit hole of Mandel's imagination - a dark, shimmering place rich in alarmingly real detail and peopled with such human, such very appealing characters. (Liza Klaussmann, author of TIGERS IN RED WEATHER)

A genuinely unsettling dystopian novel that also allows for moments of great tenderness. Emily St. John Mandel conjures indelible visuals, and her writing is pure elegance. (Patrick deWitt, author of THE SISTERS BROTHERS (shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize))

An ambitious and addictive novel (Sarah Hughes Guardian)

Book Description:

An audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame, and ambition set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1447268962
• ISBN 13: 9781447268963
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384