{"product_id":"9780143137900","title":"The Last Man by Mary Shelley","description":"Mary Shelley's landmark novel that invented the human extinction genre and initiated climate fiction, now in Penguin Classics for the first timeWritten 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, The Last Man (1826) is an early work of climate fiction and a prophetic depiction of environmental change.   Set 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 thangive 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.   Brimming with political intrigue, The Last Man broaches 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.\"\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44583017775282,"sku":"9780143137900","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780143137900.jpg?v=1720956352","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9780143137900","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}