The Year of the Flood is Margaret Atwood's companion novel to her critically-acclaimed
Oryx and Crake. It begins in "the year of the flood," where a deadly disease targeted just at humans has swept through the population, killing almost every one. Two women have survived. Toby, once an elder in a religious/environmental group called God's Gardeners, has survived in a spa where they grew food to use in the health supplements. Ren, also once a member of God's Gardeners, is locked inside a sex club. Margaret Atwood tells these women's stories and how they came to survive the year of the flood.
The Year of the Flood has received positive reviews with the New York Times saying, "By focusing on her characters and their perilous journeys through a nightmare world, she has succeeded in writing a gripping and visceral book that showcases the pure storytelling talents she displayed with such verve in her 2000 novel,
The Blind Assassin."
