Southern Reach Trilogy
5 primary works Complete
Book 1
Book 1
THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY – NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC
For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border – an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.
The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.
Now four women embark on the twelfth expedition into the unknown.
Book 2
In the second volume of the Southern Reach Trilogy, questions are answered, stakes are raised, and mysteries are deepened …
Following the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in ‘Annihilation’, the second book of the Southern Reach trilogy introduces John Rodriguez, the new head of the government agency responsible for the safeguarding of Area X. His first day is spent grappling with the fall-out from the last expedition. Area X itself remains a mystery. But, as instructed by a higher authority known only as The Voice, the self-styled Control must battle to ‘put his house in order’.
From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the mysteries of Area X begin to reveal themselves—and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he’s promised to serve.
Undermined and under pressure to make sense of everything, Rodriguez retreats into his past in a labyrinthine search for answers. Yet the more he uncovers, the more he risks, for the secrets of the Southern Reach are more sinister than anyone could have known.
Book 3
‘Pure reading pleasure’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
'Genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing’ GUARDIAN
‘Powerful and echoing’ NEW STATESMAN
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
With an introduction by Helen MacDonald
Area X has rebuffed expedition after expedition for decades, refusing to reveal its secrets. As it expands alarmingly, the Southern Reach agency tasked with its investigation has collapsed in confusion. Now, one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may yet hold vital answers. How was Area X created, and why? Can it be stopped?
In this climactic volume of the Southern Reach trilogy, reality mutates and mysteries resolve, but now that so many questions have answers, the consequences are no less profound – or terrifying.
'Pure reading pleasure' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
‘Arresting, unsettling, and unforgettable’ NEW YORKER
'Contemporary masterpieces and career-defining novels' GUARDIAN
Book 4
Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, the surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s blockbuster Southern Reach Trilogy.
When the Southern Reach Trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestsellers lists, awards were won, the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover, and the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies, and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.
And yet, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast—before Area X was called Area X—had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?
Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, this book delivers some long-awaited answers, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.