I stumbled upon Genesis by Bernard Beckett at the Book Loft and it seemed like a great fit for me: slim YA post-apocalyptic novel with a philosophical twist. I was inexplicably without reading material and needed to kill some time before a meeting that had been pushed back. so I picked this up and dove in.
Allow me to steal PW’s plot summation:
Anax, the dedicated student historian at the center of Beckett’s brutal dystopian novel, lives far in the future—the distant past events of the 21st century are taught in classrooms. The world of that era, we learn, was ravaged by plague and decay, the legacy of the Last War. Only the island Republic, situated near the bottom of the globe, remained stable and ordered, but at the cost of personal freedom. Anax, hoping her scholarly achievements will gain her entrance to the Academy, which rules her society, has extensively studied Adam Forde, a brilliant and rebellious citizen of the Republic who fought for human dignity in the midst of a regimented, sterile society. To join the Academy’s ranks, Anax undergoes a test before three examiners, and as the examination progresses, it becomes clear that her interpretations of Adam’s life defy conventional thought and there may be more to Adam—and the Academy—than she had imagined.
It turned out to be a quick entertaining read with some meaty philosophical issues in the middle and twist at the end. It struck me as a sort of interesting experiment; not entirely successful but worth doing and enjoyable.
