Annihilation

A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM ALEX GARLAND, STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC

The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with Annihilation, the Nebula Award-winning novel that reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world (Kim Stanley Robinson).

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our 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 itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers--they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding--but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

Author: Jeff VanderMeer
Publisher: Fsg Originals
Published: 02/04/2014
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 7.50h x 5.00w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780374104092
Award: Locus Awards - Nominee
Award: Nebula Awards - Winner

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/2013 pg. 84
Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2013
Booklist 12/01/2013 pg. 34
Publishers Weekly 12/23/2013
Library Journal 01/01/2014 pg. 83
New York Times Book Review 02/16/2014 pg. 30
Entertainment Weekly 03/21/2014 pg. 66
Entertainment Weekly 07/04/2014 pg. 68
Entertainment Weekly 08/22/2014 pg. 17
Kirkus Best Fiction 11/15/2014 pg. 50
SLJ Best Adult Bks 4 Teens 12/01/2014 pg. 32
Entertainment Weekly 12/12/2014 pg. 73
Library Journal 09/01/2013

About the Author
Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning novelist and editor. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in the Library of America's American Fantastic Tales and in multiple year's-best anthologies. He writes nonfiction for The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian, among others. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife