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Oryx and Crake
MARGARET ATWOOD

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
410 reviews (2003) (400p)
Man Booker Prize Finalist

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Book Description
Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.


Amazon.com Review
In Oryx and Crake, a science fiction novel that is more Swift than Heinlein, more cautionary tale than "fictional science" (no flying cars here), Margaret Atwood depicts a near-future world that turns from the merely horrible to the horrific, from a fool's paradise to a bio-wasteland. Snowman (a man once known as Jimmy) sleeps in a tree and just might be the only human left on our devastated planet. He is not entirely alone, however, as he considers himself the shepherd of a group of experimental, human-like creatures called the Children of Crake. As he scavenges and tends to his insect bites, Snowman recalls in flashbacks how the world fell apart.

While the story begins with a rather ponderous set-up of what has become a clichéd landscape of the human endgame, littered with smashed computers and abandoned buildings, it takes on life when Snowman recalls his boyhood meeting with his best friend Crake: "Crake had a thing about him even then.... He generated awe ... in his dark laconic clothing." A dangerous genius, Crake is the book's most intriguing character. Crake and Jimmy live with all the other smart, rich people in the Compounds--gated company towns owned by biotech corporations. (Ordinary folks are kept outside the gates in the chaotic "pleeblands.") Meanwhile, beautiful Oryx, raised as a child prostitute in Southeast Asia, finds her way to the West and meets Crake and Jimmy, setting up an inevitable love triangle. Eventually Crake's experiments in bioengineering cause humanity's shockingly quick demise (with uncanny echoes of SARS, ebola, and mad cow disease), leaving Snowman to try to pick up the pieces. There are a few speed bumps along the way, including some clunky dialogue and heavy-handed symbols such as Snowman's broken watch, but once the bleak narrative gets moving, as Snowman sets out in search of the laboratory that seeded the world's destruction, it clips along at a good pace, with a healthy dose of wry humor. --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca


Other Award Winning Books by Margaret Atwood
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
6313 reviews (2019) (432p) (Amazon Top100) (Amazon Top10Lit) (Time Top10) (Booker) (TIME) (Amazon)
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The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
647 reviews (2015) (320p) ()
Read Reviews | Visit this book's Amazon.com page
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood
316 reviews (2014) (288p) (Amazon Top100) (PW Fiction) (Hudson Fiction)
Read Reviews | Visit this book's Amazon.com page
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
728 reviews (2013) (416p) (Amazon Top100) (PW Fiction) (NYT100)
Read Reviews | Visit this book's Amazon.com page
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
193 reviews (2009) (320p) (ALA)
Read Reviews | Visit this book's Amazon.com page
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
581 reviews (2000) (544p) (Booker) (TIME) (ALA)
Read Reviews | Visit this book's Amazon.com page
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
177 reviews (1996) (480p) (Booker) (ALA)
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Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
123 reviews (1989) (480p) (Booker)
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The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
635 reviews (1986) (320p) (Booker) (NYTimes) (LATimes)
Read Reviews | Visit this book's Amazon.com page

Margaret Atwood Award Stats
Major Prize* Nominations 9  
Unique Books Nominated for a Major Prize* 7  
Pulitzer Prize Wins 0  
Pulitzer Prize Nominations 0  
National Book Critics Circle Award Wins 0  
National Book Critics Circle Award Nominations 0  
National Book Award Wins 0  
National Book Award Nominations 0  
Man Booker Prize Wins 2 The Blind Assassin · The Testaments ·  
Man Booker Prize Nominations 6 Alias Grace · Cat's Eye · Oryx and Crake · The Blind Assassin · The Handmaid's Tale · The Testaments ·  
PEN/Faulkner Award Wins 0  
PEN/Faulkner Award Nominations 0  

*Major Prize = Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, and PEN/Faulkner Award

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Pulitzer Prize | National Book Critics Circle Award | National Book Award | PEN/Faulkner Award | Man Booker Prize | Contact