A smartly written thriller that opens with a satisfying bang . . . splendid

Powerful and intelligent, with some unexpectedly trenchant humour, this welcome addition to the no-longer-so-speculative pandemic subgenre has plenty to say about grief, love, family ties and gender roles

Bowstring-taut, visceral, and incredibly timely: Beukes’s plague-tale is a parable about the glory and terror of Americanism in times of calamity

Lauren Beukes is a writer with a startling imagination, and a masterful ability to rewrite the rules of whatever genre she turns to; and now, right on time, she has turned to dystopian plague

Five years in writing, this intelligent speculative novel about a pandemic feels alarmingly close to home

You can’t imagine how quickly the world can change in six months – there probably isn’t a more resonant sentence to be found in any other novel published this year. A fast-moving thriller [that] splices gut-punching action sequences and feminist gender politics with an impressively light touch. Bubbles with big ideas. This intelligent speculative novel about a pandemic feels alarmingly close to home

Afterland is that rare creature, a ripping tale that neither shies away from big questions nor interesting answers

Teases out the deep familial currents that run through its relationships, explores gender and reminds us that dystopian fiction can be seriously grown-up entertainment

Afterland could not be more timely or terrifying . . . An excellent example of the prophetic nature of speculative fiction. Lauren Beukes is one of the most innovative and provocative writers on the contemporary scene

(A) timely thriller