The Year of the Flood

The Year of the Flood (2009), the second novel in the MaddAddam trilogy, runs parallel in time to Oryx and Crake but shifts the frame from the corporate Compounds to the pleeblands outside their walls. The narrative follows two women: Toby, a senior member in the eco-religious sect known as God's Gardeners, who has barricaded herself in a luxury spa with a rifle and dwindling supplies; and Ren, a former Gardener turned trapeze dancer, locked inside a quarantine room at a strip club. Both are waiting out what the Gardeners long prophesied as the Waterless Flood. God's Gardeners, led by the pacifist Adam One, cultivate rooftop gardens, mourn extinct species, and prepare their followers for civilization's collapse with a conviction that turns out to be entirely justified. The novel explores what survival looks like for those who were already living at the margins before the catastrophe, and what community, faith, and collective memory make possible when state structures dissolve entirely.

Signed copy. True Canadian first edition, published by McClelland & Stewart, preceding the American edition. Signed by Atwood on the title page.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth covered boards with red lettering on spine. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2009. ISBN: 978077108443. #10539.
Fine in fine dust jacket.