PROFILE
What would a world without men look like? That’s the question Lauren Beukes asks in her new novel, Afterland. She chatted to us about bad timing, road tripping through the USA and how she’s coping during the Covid-19 quarantine.
Men-killing viruses, neon nuns and narcissistic sisters – Lauren Beukes chats about her prescient new novel, Afterland
comic-book writer, documentarian, screenwriter and author Lauren Beukes is probably best known for her critically acclaimed international bestsellers Broken Monsters and The Shining Girls. Both these novels took readers into the mind of a serial killer, with a good dose of the fantastical. But for her new book, Afterland, she took a break from the whole murder thing. ‘You know what? I was tired of death, so I just decided to kill 3,5 billion people instead,’ she says with a laugh.
Described as a high-concept feminist dystopian thriller, Afterland imagines a world where 99% of the male population has been wiped out by a virus. Cole and her son, Miles, who is disguised as a young girl, are on the run across a very changed America, trying to find their way back home to South Africa. The nefarious
parties after them include the Department of Men and the neon nuns of the Church of All Sorrows.
President Ramaphosa had just announced that the lockdown would be extended until the end of April when Lauren and I chat over Zoom. It’s safe to say things are stressful at the moment. ‘I bought 12 bags of spaghetti, which even I think may have been overkill,’ she says.
You may think it a bit risky to launch a book that deals with a pandemic during a pandemic, and Lauren couldn’t agree more. ‘Gah, the timing,’ she says. ‘It’s taken me years and years to write and it comes out in the middle of a global pandemic.’
She’d spent so much time living in that imagined world that she remembers thinking, ‘Thank goodness I don’t have to think about that any more’ – then the pandemic hit. ‘It’s a very strange and quite unsettling thing to now live through something like it,’ she says. But although Afterland features a virus, it isn’t a depressing read. ‘It’s a literary pulpy adventure that just happens to take place in a post-pandemic world.’
I’ve read the book, and I can assure you it’s not actually about a pandemic. ‘It’s a classic road chase novel, but in a way that we haven’t necessarily seen before – with two women,’ says Lauren.
‘There seems to be this idea that a world of women would be soft and gentle – we’re going to make friendship bracelets and all live on communal farms. There is some of that, but the power structures and problems of the world are still there.’ The world in Afterland may be short on men, but it is definitely not short on bad ‘guys’. And the worst of them all is Cole’s own sister, Billie. ‘She’s just a jerk,’ says Lauren.
There’s a Cain and Abel feel to Cole and Billie’s relationship, and it’s pretty far removed from how we picture relationships between sisters. ‘She’s a terrible human being, and that was so much fun to write,’ says Lauren. Another epic baddie is the woman Billie works for, the Godmother-esque Mrs Amato. Her husband was a mediocre bad guy, whereas she’s extremely ruthless.
‘I hung out with the Cape Town Metro Police for an assignment I was doing and asked them, “What would happen if all the men disappeared tomorrow? What would happen with crime, gangsterism, drugs and social problems?” They rolled their eyes and said that none of that would go away.’ In fact, when one of SA’s most notorious gangs, The Americans, was at its most violent, it was led by Mama America. As a woman, explains Lauren, she had more to prove. ‘It actually settled down quite a bit after she appointed her son-in-law.’
During her research into what this all-female world would look like, Lauren consulted everyone from economists to immigration lawyers. ‘I’d ask pretty much everyone I met what they thought a world without men would look like.’ Her friend, Scott Hanselman – a programmer, teacher, technologist and writer – directed her to his podcast Hanselminutes: he had interviewed female coders in Egypt and Qatar, where the field is dominated by women, a fact she used in the book. Other industries remain male-dominated; to this day you’d be hard-pressed to find a female satellite technician, undersea diving cable technician or trucker. ‘I went on a container ship and asked the captain the same thing,’ says Lauren. The real problem, he said, wouldn’t be the ships because they can practically pilot themselves; even planes can land themselves. ‘But you still need someone to guide the ships into the harbour. It’s mostly these cowboy types and it’s based on years of experience, so it’s not something you can learn overnight,’ says Lauren.
It wasn’t just society that Lauren wanted to paint as realistic; the virus itself needed to be believable too.
‘I spoke to some geneticists and I got deep into the science of how this would work in the real world.’ Although the virus in the novel isn’t very plausible (in case you were worried), Lauren needed to have the scientific knowledge to explain the theory, and why in the world of Afterland there would be a reproduction prohibition (which is why Miles is such a hot commodity on the black market). Luckily, Lauren had some badass female doctors who could help. ‘I spoke to Dr Janine Scholfield, Dr Bridget Calder, Dr Kerry Gordon and the soon-to-be-Dr Hayley Tomes to get a feel for how this virus would work.’
In Lauren’s novels, the cities are as much a character as the people. ‘For Broken Monsters I went to Detroit, and for The Shining Girls I was in Chicago.’ For Afterland it was tricky to encapsulate a place, because the characters are travelling across the US. So naturally, she had to do her own road trip to get a feel for how these places would be experienced by Cole and Miles: the things they would see and the people they would meet. She landed in San Francisco jet-lagged, and got straight into a
’There seems to be this idea that a world of women would be soft and gentle – we’re going to make friendship bracelets and all live on communal farms.’
rental car to Napa. (‘Great for getting into Cole’s headspace, but I’m not sure I would recommend it as safe driving practice.’)
‘In Salt Lake City I hung out with an ex-Mormon named Ashleigh, who took me on what she called the Ex-Mo tour; there’s an almost verbatim account of it in the book.’ This includes a weird pyramidshaped temple that Ashleigh’s brothers would shield her eyes from when she was younger – there was a sign outside it that read ‘Come Masturbate with Us’. (‘It was a weird time, I guess?’ says Lauren.)
In Atlanta, she paid her Uber driver, Anja, to take her around the city; eventually they ended up at The Claremont, a pretty infamous strip club for retired strippers. ‘Women who are older and no longer stripping can perform there,’ she says. The experience went on to inspire Barbarella’s in the book, a strip club run by a retired stripper that caters to an all-female clientele. Then, in Miami, her Airbnb hosts Donald and Erik helped her find the perfect spot for her finale. ‘They took me to this amazing Brutalist parking lot in Miami Beach and I just had this beautiful mental image of every layer of the parking lot filled with the sisters of the Church of All Sorrows in their neon-print robes.
‘I love tapping into that local knowledge and finding people who are interesting and who can show me their perspective of a city or place.’ But she also found that she had to hold back. ‘I wanted to build up whole communities and tell you everything there is to know about the anarchists living in Salt Lake City based on the people I’d met – but I had to keep reminding myself that there wasn’t time for that. Cole is racing through these cities to get Miles to a place where he can be himself; she’s not getting to know people for two weeks.’
With all the research that went into the novel, it’s easy to see why some have labelled it ‘prophetic’. After reading this eerily foretelling line, I wondered, too: ‘A notice at the cash register with a sad-face emoji reads, “Sorry! Hand Sanitizer Sold Out!”’
Because of the lockdown, Lauren pushed up Afterland’s ebook release date. (Buy on Amazon, Snapplify, Kobo and Google Books, R290; also in print at most retailers.) and readers have been calling it ‘anxietyinducing’ and ‘quite possibly the perfect read for 2020’. Which it is. But Lauren is aware that the man-eradicating plot-line might spark some anger online. ‘They’re going to say I hate men, but it’s a terrible loss for the characters. They’ve lost brothers, lovers, partners, husbands, sons, fathers… Cole is still reeling from that while trying to do the right thing by her kid.’
Apart from promoting Afterland online, you may be wondering what Lauren has been up to during the lockdown. ‘Obviously, I’ve written my next three novels and I’m working on my PhD because everyone is just so productive right now,’ she says with a laugh. ‘In all seriousness, I think we all need to realise that this is a very traumatic time. It’s devastating for people, and we need to just be human.’
One positive thing to come out of lockdown for her is seeing communities come together to help those most affected. ‘I’d love to see more of that now and after this all ends. I do hope we’ll come out on the other side and that our own Afterland will be more positive.’