Blackbirds 2023 - Generation A

• Leesniveau: C: Adult adultreader
• Schooltype: VO bovenbouw havo/vwo (4 havo, 5 havo, 4 vwo, 5 vwo, 6 vwo), mbo C1
• Leeftijdscategorie: 16-18 jaar

In the near future bees are extinct - until one autumn when five unconnected individuals, in America, New Zealand, France, Canada and Sri Lanka, are stung. Immediately snatched up by ominous figures in hazmat suits, interrogated separately in neutral Ikea-like chambers, and then released as 15-minute-celebrities into a world driven almost entirely by the internet, these five unforgettable people endure a barrage of unusual and highly 21st-century circumstances. A charismatic scientist with dubious motives eventually brings the quintet together on a remote Canadian island. But their shared experience unites them in a way they could never have imagined.

Generation A mirrors the structure of 1991’s Generation X as it champions the act of reading and storytelling as one of the few defenses we still have against the constant bombardment of the senses in a digital world. Like much of Coupland’s writing, it occupies the perplexing hinterland between optimism about the future and everyday, apocalyptic paranoia, and is his most ambitious and entertaining novel to date.

Review

Generation A is set in the near future in a world where bees are extinct, until five unconnected people all around the world— in the United States, Canada, France, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka—are all stung. Their shared experience unites them in ways they never could have imagined.

Generation A mirrors Coupland’s debut novel, 1991’s Generation X. It explores new ways of storytelling in a digital world. Like much of Coupland’s writing, it occupies the perplexing hinterland between optimism about the future and everyday apocalyptic paranoia. Imaginative, inventive, and fantastically entertaining, Generation A is his most ambitious work to date.

Bron: Simon & Schuster