The Last Man by Mary Shelley Paperback Book 9780143137900

Mary Shelleys landmark novel that invented the human extinction genre and initiated climate fiction now in Penguin Classics for the first timeWritten while Mary Shelley was in a selfimposed lockdown after the loss of her husband and children and in the wake of intersecting crises including the climatechanging Mount Tambora eruption and a raging cholera outbreak The Last Man 1826 is an early work of climate fiction and a prophetic depiction of environmental changeSet in the late twentyfirst century a deadly pandemic leaves a lone survivor and follows his journey through a postapocalyptic world devoid of humanity and reclaimed by nature Rather thangive in to despair Shelley imagines a new world where freshlyformed communities and alternative ways of being stand in for selfimportant politicians serving corrupt institutions and where nature reigns mightily over humanityBrimming with political intrigue The Last Man broaches partisan dysfunction imperial warfare refugee crises and economic collapseand brings the legacy of her radically progressive parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft to bear on presentday questions about making a better world less centred around quotmanquot