Oryx and CrakeA Novel

Margaret Atwood

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Summary

Oryx and Crake

By: Margaret Atwood

Narrarated by: Campbell Scott

A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize

Margaret Atwood’s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it.

This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again.

The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes – into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.

With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.

Sample Audiobook
Audiobook Information
EDITOR'S PICK // New York Times Best Seller
  • Edition: Unabridged
  • Author: Margaret Atwood (See All Books)
  • Date Released: Sep 17, 2007
  • Publisher: Random House Audio
  • Genre: Utopia & Dystopia, Fiction & Literature, Science Fiction

Total File Size: 288 MB (9 files) Total Length: 10 Hours, 30 Minutes

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Alfred Soto

eMusic Contributor

09.17.07
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
2007 | Label: Random House Audio

The author of The Handmaid's Tale returns to dystopia.
The worst that can be said about Margaret Atwood's craggy, wintry fiction is that her politics form a predictably noisy distraction on the topography of her most imaginative narratives. But she's a fabulist of the first order, and comes close to creating autonomous beings that sometimes threaten to walk away from their host novels in a way that eluded other specialists in dystopia such as George Orwell.

Despite its post-apocalyptic trappings, Oryx and Crake is the most contemporaneous of Atwood's recent fictions; hers is a world in which the consequences of globalization reduce her characters to almost neanderthal privations. (Think Oliver Assayas' 2002 film Demonlover played with the implications of trans-global pornography). Thanks to deft flashbacks, we piece together the story of Snowman, who lived in awe of Gatsby-esque best friend Crake in Soviet-style dachas called Compounds before the world ended. Snowman's attempt to assemble what's left of his life is complicated by a romance with Oryx, an adolescent porn star of a film called HottTotts whose influence on Snowman forces him to realize what damage Crake had wrought. As with a lot of science-fiction, Atwood burdens the narrative with a lot of background color and exposition; she doesn't trust the potential of her characters to project their pain all by themselves. Let us praise actor Campbell Scott, whose dry-as-gin inflections are the ideal balm. Still, as always, trust the strangeness of Atwood's tale. And its contemporaneity.

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Not available in Canada

RussellMcOrmond

I find it interesting that this book by a Canadian author isn't available in Canada. Also interesting that The Year Of the Flood is, which is the sequel.

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Incomplete Download

mauvelabiche

Cannot download more than 14 parts, which is annoying as I was really enjoying the story...

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The future is bleak

hamtowner

I will start off by saying that the big mystery of the book-- how the world got that way-- is a bit silly. Nevertheless, the world that Atwood creates is fascinating. Better yet, the story moves right along with one bizarre moment after another. This book is far better than the other eMusic selection from Atwood, "The Blind Assassin," which seems to be a more popular book for some reason. Still, Atwood is on a gradual decline from her peak with "The Handmaid's Tale."

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Dream steals from its lair towards its prey.

tresadorable

'Nough said.

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Very enjoyable

spoogle

I feel privileged when a real writer sets their hand seriously to a work of science fiction, a genre which too often describes great events set against magnificent backdrops with a stream of short cliches. So it is a please to experience Margaret Atwood's artful use of language. In addition, this audio edition of the book is exceptionally well narrated.

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Excellent

101

Very rich and well written SF. I was surprised how good this was.