{"product_id":"the-last-man-paperback","title":"The Last Man (Paperback)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMary Shelley's landmark novel that invented the human extinction genre and initiated climate fiction, now in Penguin Classics for the first time\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten while Mary Shelley was in a self-imposed lockdown after the loss of her husband and children, and in the wake of intersecting crises including the climate-changing Mount Tambora eruption and a raging cholera outbreak, \u003ci\u003eThe Last Man\u003c\/i\u003e (1826) is an early work of climate fiction and a prophetic depiction of environmental change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSet in the late twenty-first century, a deadly pandemic leaves a lone survivor, and follows his journey through a post-apocalyptic world, devoid of humanity and reclaimed by nature. Rather than\u003cbr\u003egive in to despair, Shelley imagines a new world where freshly-formed communities and alternative ways of being stand in for self-important politicians serving corrupt institutions, and where nature reigns mightily over humanity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrimming with political intrigue, \u003ci\u003eThe Last Man \u003c\/i\u003ebroaches partisan dysfunction, imperial warfare, refugee crises, and economic collapse-and brings the legacy of her radically progressive parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, to bear on present-day questions about making a better world less centred around \"man.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mary Shelley","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43719820411058,"sku":"9780143137900","price":395.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0562\/9191\/8002\/products\/410543_65da963e7d5908.30656619_9780143137900.jpg?v=1708837793","url":"https:\/\/www.wordsworth.co.za\/products\/the-last-man-paperback","provider":"Wordsworth Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}