Absolution - (Southern Reach) by Jeff VanderMeer

About the Book

"A continued exploration of the mysterious Area X by the scientists and voyagers that VanderMeer introduced ten years ago in the original volumes"--

Book Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2024:
The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York magazine, Time, Kirkus, Literary Hub, Goodreads

The surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series--and the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

When the Southern Reach trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestseller list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.

And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast--before Area X was called Area X--had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?

Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. There are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

Review Quotes

"Some of VanderMeer's best writing...deserves to be mentioned alongside Poe, Chesterton and Borges's other exemplars of the unheimlich, whose confrontation with the uncanny is central to the mission of speculative fiction."
--Alec Nevala-Lee, The New York Times Book Review

"Againt all odds, Absolution is. . . just as good as the first three novels. It works for the same reason the others did. It manages, once again, to find that rare balance between revealing (the task of the novel) and revealing too much (the danger horror must avoid). Even when it threatens to settle down into the established pattern of its predecessors, it veers, in its final third, into something entirely more alien and alienating. . . Absolution could have dragged the series' many monsters and mysteries into a clarifying light. Instead, it sticks to the shadows, just where the best horror belongs."
--Jess Keiser, The Washington Post

"Absolution is the latest and last installment in the lush, eerie series covering an unknown biological phenomenon known as Area X. . . Absolution marks the conclusion of a weird and wonderful journey involving an assortment of biological abnormalities and government secrets. In the meantime, it seems as if the unusual world that VanderMeer wrote about and the one that we live in today are growing closer and closer."
--Siri Chilukuri, Mother Jones

"An eerie and evocative coda to [Jeff VanderMeer's] Southern Reach horror-fantasy trilogy . . . This foray into the human cost of bureaucratic paranoia and the abandonment of logic to 'hope, prayers, and blessings' provokes, mystifies, and challenges readers in turn. VanderMeer's horrifying declaration of the impossibility of knowing the other is a knockout."
-Publishers Weekly, starred review

"With [Absolution, ] VanderMeer lures readers back into the hallucinatory clutches of Area X . . . Three linked stories explore the years leading up to the Area X Event, weaving deftly in and out of the timeline established by the trilogy, obliquely referring to key characters and moments that will reward careful readers . . . No character escapes with their sanity intact, though their madness may reveal greater truths that have far-reaching implications for the series. Still, VanderMeer understands that the mystery is the point, and, as told in beautiful prose infused with bizarre and disturbing images, Area X remains as fascinating and unknowable as ever."
-Booklist, starred review

" Not unlike David Lynch going back to Twin Peaks, Absolution is simultaneously unlike anything else VanderMeer has done and also perfectly in line with the works that came before it."
--Drew Broussard, Literary Hub

About the Author

Jeff VanderMeer is the author of Hummingbird Salamander; the Borne novels (Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts); and the Southern Reach series (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance, and Absolution), the first volume of which won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award and was adapted into a movie by Alex Garland. He has spoken at MIT, Columbia, Yale, and Vanderbilt, and gave the 2024 John Hersey Memorial Address at the Key West Literary Seminar. Environmental nonfiction by VanderMeer has appeared in Time, The Nation, and Esquire, among other publications. VanderMeer founded the Sunshine State Biodiversity Group nonprofit in 2023.