The Shadows Tomorrow - by Noelle Michel & Frank Wynne (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Sea of Tranquility meets Dark Matter in this dizzying speculative thriller following a clan of Neanderthals living in isolation on a nature reserve and the scientists who care for them.

A clan of humans--they hunt and gather, they have lovers and rivals, their own society. They pass on the legends of their ancestors and celebrate festival nights. Their world is the forest which feeds them, and, aside from the fierce cold and illness, the only thing they have to fear is the Beast who prowls the impassable Bounds. They do not know that beyond it an entirely different world exists: our world.

Set in the near future, the Neanderthal race has been recreated from fragments of DNA and reintroduced on a nature reserve where they are observed and studied, ultimately becoming the subjects of a hit documentary series. Following a cast of characters across time: Blood Moon, the leader of the Neanderthal clan who is mourning the death of her partner, Blizzard; Eva and Noah, scientists in modern-day Paris hired to work on a top-secret project; Jules, a teenager growing up in a secluded mountain town with a suspiciously pronounced brow; Adam, an actor brought to appear on NeanderTales for the first time; and finally, the man behind the project--but is he Sapien or Neanderthal?

A reeling suspense novel with shocking surprises that also sheds light on our ethical and moral considerations in and out of nature, showing the other human we could have been, The Shadows Tomorrow will grip you until the very end.

Review Quotes

"Breathless and high quality."
--Le Monde

"Brilliant and unsettling."
--Livres Hebdo

About the Author

Noëlle Michel is a translator and author. An engineer in biological engineering, she worked for ten years in wastewater treatment. Passionate about languages and literature, she became a freelance translator. Initially specializing in technical translation, she then developed her skills in literary translation. Noëlle lives and works in Ghent, Belgium.

Frank Wynne has translated over fifty works from French and Spanish by authors including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Ahmadou Kourouma, Tomás González, and Arturo Pérez-Reverte. During his career, his translations have earned him the IMPAC Prize for Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and he has twice been awarded the Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation in 2008 and 2016 for Harraga by Boualem Sansal. He is a two-time winner of the Premio Valle Inclán, for Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras and for The Blue Hour by Alonso Cueto. His translations have been awarded the CWA International Dagger in three consecutive years. He has spent time as translator in residence at the Villa Gillet in Lyons and at the Santa Maddalena Foundation.