Maddaddam is the third of Margaret Atwood's trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake in 2003, and continued with The Year of the Flood in 2009. The first two books ran in parallel time streams, and ended at the same place and time, Maddaddam begins at that point, and takes the story forward, but also fills in detail about much more that went on in the past. This is literary dystopia of the highest order; Atwood's imagination is extraordinary, and her storytelling as compelling and moving as ever, but it's not just the imagining that makes these books such essential reading - it's the fact that, to quote from the afterword: "Although Maddaddam is a work of fiction, it does not include any technologies or biobeings that do not already exist, are not under construction, or are not possible in theory." I suspect that if you haven't read the earlier titles, you won't be reading this one first; although this book includes a refresher at the start, they really should be read in the order they were intended. A cautionary tale for our times.