While awake...
"Wren, M. K. A Gift Upon the Shore. New York: Ballantine, 1990. New York: Ballantine, 1991. London: Penguin, 1991.
Two women struggle to keep knowledge alive in Oregon in the wake of a general collapse climaxed by a nuclear war ("the End") and an ensuing nuclear winter and plague. Electromagnetic pulse effects destroy electronics, and damage to the ozone layer leads to widespread blindness in both humans and animals. After a period during which roving bandits pose the main threat, the greatest obstacle to the survival of civilization is the flourishing of bigoted Christian fundamentalism among the few survivors left. More sensitive and intelligent than most such stories. A list of the books chosen by the main characters to perpetuate human culture is printed on the inside of the dust jacket."
"Jersild, P[er] C. After the Flood. Originally Efter Floden. Albert Bonniers, 1982. Translated from the Swedish by Lö ne Thygesen Blecher and George Blecher. New York: Morrow, 1986.
The thirty-three year-old narrator was born after the holocaust into a depopulated, brutalized world. His harelip is his only deformity in a world in which most of the few surviving women are either infertile or give birth only to terribly deformed babies. He escapes from the gang of pirates where he was forced to have sex with the captain, seeking a better life, but is pursued by them relentlessly. He takes a fertile nun as his lover, but she dies in childbirth. There is a glimmer of hope as a seemingly well-adapted tribe of dark-skinned reindeer herders appear, but they succumb to disease. It seems at the end of the novel that all humans and most other life forms are doomed to extinction. Damage to the ozone layer is described. The author is a physician who says he was deeply impressed by the instructions given him in medical school for dealing with the more serious victims of a nuclear attack: put them out of their misery with an injection. At the Seventh World Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1987), Jersild spoke movingly of the responsibility of authors to depict accurately the consequences of nuclear war. The novel was an international best-seller, translated into many languages."
Paul Brians
"Wren, M. K. A Gift Upon the Shore. New York: Ballantine, 1990. New York: Ballantine, 1991. London: Penguin, 1991.
Two women struggle to keep knowledge alive in Oregon in the wake of a general collapse climaxed by a nuclear war ("the End") and an ensuing nuclear winter and plague. Electromagnetic pulse effects destroy electronics, and damage to the ozone layer leads to widespread blindness in both humans and animals. After a period during which roving bandits pose the main threat, the greatest obstacle to the survival of civilization is the flourishing of bigoted Christian fundamentalism among the few survivors left. More sensitive and intelligent than most such stories. A list of the books chosen by the main characters to perpetuate human culture is printed on the inside of the dust jacket."
"Jersild, P[er] C. After the Flood. Originally Efter Floden. Albert Bonniers, 1982. Translated from the Swedish by Lö ne Thygesen Blecher and George Blecher. New York: Morrow, 1986.
The thirty-three year-old narrator was born after the holocaust into a depopulated, brutalized world. His harelip is his only deformity in a world in which most of the few surviving women are either infertile or give birth only to terribly deformed babies. He escapes from the gang of pirates where he was forced to have sex with the captain, seeking a better life, but is pursued by them relentlessly. He takes a fertile nun as his lover, but she dies in childbirth. There is a glimmer of hope as a seemingly well-adapted tribe of dark-skinned reindeer herders appear, but they succumb to disease. It seems at the end of the novel that all humans and most other life forms are doomed to extinction. Damage to the ozone layer is described. The author is a physician who says he was deeply impressed by the instructions given him in medical school for dealing with the more serious victims of a nuclear attack: put them out of their misery with an injection. At the Seventh World Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1987), Jersild spoke movingly of the responsibility of authors to depict accurately the consequences of nuclear war. The novel was an international best-seller, translated into many languages."
Paul Brians
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