The Last Man

The Last Man is a novel set in the late twenty-first century, imagined as a manuscript found in a cave near Naples. It follows a circle of friends in an England that has become a republic, with politics, love and ambition shaping their lives. Then a terrible plague spreads across the world, and the narrator watches society, family and hope give way. Shelley draws on her own grief and on portraits of people close to her. It is an early and sombre vision of the end of humankind, and a meditation on friendship, loss and survival.