Synopses & Reviews
SPECIAL TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
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 world for years. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. Expeditions into Area X have ended in disaster or death.
In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the latest expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; 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 itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers--they discover lifeforms that surpass understanding. But it's the secrets they carried across the border with them that change everything.
About the Author
Jeff VanderMeer is the authorof Hummingbird Salamander, the Borne novels(Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts), andThe Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority,and Acceptance), the first volume of which won theNebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award andwas adapted into a movie by Alex Garland. Hespeaks and writes frequently about issues relating toclimate change as well as urban rewilding. He livesin Tallahassee, Florida, on the edge of a ravine, withhis wife, Ann VanderMeer, and their cat, Neo.