InQ Episode 84: “MaddAddam trilogy”

In her latest trilogy, Margaret Atwood describes an eerie post-apocalyptic world in which most of the human race has been destroyed by a “waterless flood” aka an engineer plague.

All that is left are a few Gardeners (a cult-like group who refuse to eat meat and live according to nature), the Crakers (an engineered race created by Crake to be a perfect humanoid civilization) and a few mixed animals (the most important being the pigoons, pigs equipped with human brain tissue)

Will humanity survive? And if yes, how?

The story is told from various perspectives (from Jimmy to Ren, to Toby, to Zeb, and finally to Bluebeard) and move back and forth between the present (year 25, post-apocalypse) and the past (how and why the plague came to be? who were Oryx and Crake? who is Adam one? was there an Eve One? what happened to the world?)

A very good tale of despair and hope, of civilization (re)created, of what it means to live in a deprived world run by the CorpSeCorps, of love and friendship, and of blue abdomens…