John Mandel is a bold vision of a dystopian future, frighteningly real, perfect for fans of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in North America. Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse. If civilization was lost, what would you preserve? And how far would you go to protect it?.
beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac, a book that I will long remember, and return to.' George R.R.