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MANY years ago I thought that Margaret Atwood’s was a 1980s feminist dystopia, scarcely connected to any real world. Now, factor in the repro-tech revolution, authoritarian governments, fundamentalist Christians, pragmatic Taliban, a persistent war of the sexes, and I fear as I fear any true seer.

Wherever you file The Year of the Flood – science fiction, satire, speculative fiction, dystopia, allegory (frankly it scarcely matters) – careful reading leaves you feeling you could easily wake up in this world, a revisiting of her earlier Oryx and Crake from a bottom-up, female viewpoint.

Despite the mix of genres, you still care about the characters as they grope their way through a post-pandemic apocalypse where everything – including the lab-created hybrids – is running wild, and a religious cult is one of the few comforts available. This is a densely allusive novel: you’ll need to be adept in literature, science and theology to mine its subtleties.

Sci-fi special: The fiction of now