Station Eleven

7 of 8
Station Eleven
352 pages; Knopf

The Finalist Too Compelling to Put Down

Though this novel begins with the death of a 51-year-old actor during a performance of King Lear, it quickly flips into a bleak, mysterious future in which most of the world has been killed off by a pandemic flu. Two young people, who now play instruments and act in the productions of a theatrical caravan called Traveling Symphony, walk from ad hoc town to ad hoc town, dodging doomsday cults and bandits, clinging to a certain comic book written by the actor's ex-wife—the last link to the civilization that vanished when they were almost too young to remember it. A finalist for the National Book Award, this imaginative, dazzling read is so eerily timely that it both terrifies and seduces.