Description

Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Jeff VanderMeer’s award-winning Southern Reach Trilogy opens with Annihilation, a novel praised by Kim Stanley Robinson as reminiscent of classic explorers from Verne or Wells thrust into a surreal, Kafka-inspired nightmare.

For years, a mysterious area known only as Area X has existed, isolated entirely from the outside world. Within its borders, nature has completely taken over the ruins of human civilization. Expeditions dispatched previously have met grim fates, either vanishing or ending in tragedy.

Annihilation follows the latest group sent to investigate. Comprising four women—a biologist who narrates the mission, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and their psychologist leader—the expedition’s goals are clear: chart the unfamiliar landscape, carefully observe and document all that they encounter, and, above all, guard against any potential contamination from Area X itself.

Anticipating surprises, the explorers enter. But Area X proves even more mysterious and unsettling than expected, offering encounters with strange and incomprehensible lifeforms. Soon, however, the team realizes that it’s not only Area X’s hidden mysteries that pose a danger—equally perilous are the secrets each member brought along.