Description

‘A contemporary masterpiece’
GUARDIAN

‘Creepy and fascinating’ STEPHEN KING

‘A psycho-geograpical tour de force’
FINANCIAL TIMES

THE BASIS FOR A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

With an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler

In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s now-classic Southern Reach series, Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades and nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilisation. Expedition after expedition into Area X has failed to uncover its mysteries and the true nature of its danger to the world.

Now a twelfth expedition makes the attempt, a group of four women: an anthropologist, a surveyor, a psychologist and the narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X.

A harrowing cosmic mystery at the vanguard of eco-fiction, Annihilation has only become more pertinent to our reality ten years after its first publication.

‘Powerful and echoing’
NEW STATESMAN

‘Genuinely potent and dream-haunting’
GUARDIAN

‘Arresting, unsettling, and unforgettable’
NEW YORKER

Publisher Review

Praise for ANNIHILATION and the SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY:
`I’m loving the Southern Reach Trilogy … Creepy and fascinating’ Stephen King
`Hauntingly weird and brilliantly new … These are contemporary masterpieces and career-defining novels’ Adam Robert, Books of the Year, Guardian
`This trilogy is a modern mycological masterpiece … Remarkable … Tense, eerie and unsettling … VanderMeer writes much better prose than Poe ever did … This is genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing. VanderMeer has arrived.’ Guardian
`A teeming science fiction that draws on Conrad and Lovecraft alike … “Annihilation” shows signs of being the novel that will allow VanderMeer to break through to a new and larger audience’ Sunday Telegraph
`A lasting monument to the uncanny … You find yourself afraid to turn the page’ Guardian
`VanderMeer’s novel is a psycho-geographical tour de force, channelling Ballard and Lovecraft to instil the reader with a deep, delicious unease’ Financial Times
`What a haunting book this is, lodging deep in the memory in similar fashion to otherworldly classics such as David Lindsay’s “A Voyage To Arcturus” … “Annihilation” is so disquietingly strange as to defy summarisation. Read it’ Daily Mail
`Astonishing, frightening, spectacular … The imaginative daring and reach with which VanderMeer has invented and executed a concept such as Area X is breathtaking … Powerful and echoing … I hope the trilogy will come to be seen not only as the instant sci-fi classic it is, but also as Literature’ New Statesman
`Immersive, insightful and often deeply bloody creepy, this is a startlingly good novel … A major work’ ***** SFX Magazine
`A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unravelling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot of Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and claustrophobic dread that lingers long afterwards. I loved it’ Lauren Beukes
`Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent’ Warren Ellis