Oryx and Crake
Snowman, perhaps the last human being on what was once North America, wakes in a tree above a beach and rations his dwindling supplies while caring, from a distance, for the childlike engineered humans who have replaced his species. In chapters that cut between his depleted present and the corporate-compound childhood he shared with his brilliant friend Crake and the haunted young woman Oryx, he reconstructs how a pandemic designed in a biotech lab emptied the planet. Margaret Atwood treats the apocalypse less as spectacle than as the logical outcome of the consumer, advertising, and genetic-engineering cultures she sees already in place.
Where Oryx and Crake keeps showing up
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What you might want to know about Oryx and Crake
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A man who calls himself Snowman lives in a tree near a beach, watching over a tribe of green-eyed people who are not quite human. The story circles back to how the world ended, and to his old friend.
Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy has three books: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam. The trilogy is complete and forms an interlocking post-apocalyptic story.
Yes. Oryx and Crake (2003) is the first book in the trilogy and establishes the world. The Year of the Flood retells overlapping events from a different perspective.
Oryx and Crake was written by Margaret Atwood, published in 2003 by Nan A. Talese Doubleday.
Oryx and Crake is 389 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Oryx and Crake takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Oryx and Crake is a standalone novel by Margaret Atwood, not part of a series.
Oryx and Crake is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
