Station Eleven
One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of "King Lear." Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them. Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave. In a future in which a pandemic has left few survivors, actress Kirsten Raymonde travels with a
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What you might want to know about Station Eleven
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
On the night the Georgia Flu reaches Toronto, an aging actor dies on stage during King Lear. Twenty years later, the Traveling Symphony walks through the empty Great Lakes performing Shakespeare for survivors.
Yes. HBO Max released a 10-episode Station Eleven adaptation in 2021 to 2022. The show is widely considered one of the best literary adaptations of recent years and is more hopeful than typical post-apocalyptic fiction.
Yes. Station Eleven shares a connected world with The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility. Characters cross over. Each book stands on its own.
Station Eleven was written by Emily St. John Mandel, published in 2014 by Alto.
Station Eleven is 352 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, Station Eleven takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
Station Eleven is a standalone novel by Emily St. John Mandel, not part of a series.
Station Eleven is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.