Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time-from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theatre troupe known as the Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame and the beauty of the world as we know it. (From HarperCollins Canada)

Station Elevenwas adapted into a TV series for HBO Max. It can be seen on Crave TV in Canada.

Station Elevenwill bechampioned by actor, director and choreographer Michael GreyeyesonCanada Reads2023.

TheCanada Readsdebates will take place on March 27-30. This year, we are looking for one book to shift your perspective.

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They will be hosted byAli Hassanandwill be broadcast onCBC Radio One,CBC TV,CBC Gemand onCBC Books.

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Emily St. John Mandel is a bestselling Canadian author currently livingin New York and Los Angeles. Her other novels includeThe Glass Hotel,which was afinalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize,andSea of Tranquility.

Why Emily St. John Mandel wrote Station Eleven

"Ithought that it would be a book set in the present day. I knew I wanted to write about the life of an actor. Iwas interested in the idea of what it means to devote your life to your art. I thought it would bea quiet, literary novel about an actor in present-day Canada...but there was something else that i have really been wanting to write about for a while. And that was the awe that Ifeelat this world in which we find ourselves.

I wanted to write about this extraordinary place and time in which we find ourselves. andof course one way to write about something is to write about its absence.- Emily St. John Mandel

"We are surrounded by a level of infrastructureand technology that at any other point in human history would have seemed absolutely miraculous. I wanted to write about this extraordinary place and time in which we find ourselves. andof course one way to write about something is to write about its absence. I was thinking aboutStation Elevenas a love letter to the modern world, writtenin the form of a requiem."

Read more in her interview with The Next Chapter.

More interviews with Emily St. John Mandel

The Next Chapter17:372015 Highlights: Emily St. John Mandel

The author of "Station Eleven" on her bestselling debut novel, and why post-apocalyptic fiction is all the rage. (Broadcast date: May 11, 2015)

Other books by Emily St. John Mandel