Absolution
Published on 23. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
480 pages
978-0-00-872599-0 (ISBN)
Description
Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, the surprise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer's blockbuster Southern Reach Trilogy.
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 bestsellers 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, there are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is 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 bestsellers 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, there are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for the Southern Reach Trilogy:'I'm loving the Southern Reach Trilogy ... Creepy and fascinating' Stephen King
'Hauntingly weird and brilliantly new ... These are contemporary masterpieces and career-defining novels' Adam Robert, Books of the Year, Guardian
'Unsettling and unputdownable like a good old-fashioned adventure story, only weirder, beautifully written and not at all old-fashioned' Karen Joy Fowler, Bookpage
'This trilogy is a modern mycological masterpiece ... Remarkable ... Tense, eerie and unsettling ... Genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing. VanderMeer has arrived' Guardian
'An ever-creeping map of the apocalypse' Colson Whitehead
'Revelatory, terrifying and marvellous' Helen MacDonald
'A teeming science fiction that draws on Conrad and Lovecraft alike' Sunday Telegraph
'A lasting monument to the uncanny ... You find yourself afraid to turn the page' Guardian
'VanderMeer's novel is a psycho-geographical tour de force, channelling Ballard and Lovecraft to instil the reader with a deep, delicious unease' Financial Times
'The payoff is absolutely worth the patience' N. K. Jemisin, The New York Times Book Review
'So disquietingly strange as to defy summarisation. Read it' Daily Mail
'Astonishing, frightening, spectacular ... I hope the trilogy will come to be seen not only as the instant sci-fi classic it is, but also as Literature' New Statesman
'Immersive, insightful and often deeply bloody creepy, this is a startlingly good novel ... A major work' ***** SFX Magazine
'A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unravelling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot of Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and claustrophobic dread that lingers long afterwards. I loved it' Lauren Beukes
'Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent' Warren Ellis
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers
Product notice
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 197 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
318 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-00-872599-0 (9780008725990)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Jeff VanderMeer
Absolution
Book
11/2024
Fourth Estate
€19.00
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Person
Jeff VanderMeer is the author of Hummingbird Salamander, the Borne novels, the Southern Reach Series, the Ambergris Trilogy and Veniss Underground. He writes widely about issues relating to climate change and the environment.