Description

Discover the haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world.

Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?

Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl – the fortieth prisoner – sits alone and outcast in the corner.

Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, MAN BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE WATER CURE

Publisher Review

A consistently gripping experience * TLS * A vivid evocation of another world, alive with hope and dignity in the midst of cruelty and alienation... A haunting testimony from an abandoned planet -- Megan Hunter A novel that takes you into philosophically interesting territory... this [is a] intriguingly dark thought experiment told by a compellingly alien voice - dispassionate and unfussy - is strangely fascinating -- Lucy Scholes * The Times *