Escape

In the country she inhabits, Meiji is unique. The only surviving female in a land where women have been exterminated, she has been brought up in secret, cloistered and protected, by three men she knows as her uncles – Eldest, Middle and Youngest. Now, as she approaches adolescence, her guardians must ensure that the dictatorial clone Generals who rule their world never get to know of her existence, and it falls to Youngest to escort Meiji on a long and treacherous journey through ravaged landscapes to the very edge of the world known to them. An adventure story like no other, a tale of love and self-discovery in several unexpected layers, Escape is a novel that is as unsettling as it is unputdownable. In its captivating portrayal of tender relationships blooming and thriving in a vicious, forbidding landscape, it bears out Manjula Padmanabhan’s genius as a creator of compelling alternative worlds.