Alex Garland Books In Order

Novels

The Beach (1996)
The Tesseract (1998)
28 Days Later (2002)
The Coma (2004)
Sunshine (2007)

Plays

Never Let Me Go (2011)
Ex Machina (2015)
Annihilation (2018)

Novels Book Covers

Plays Book Covers

Alex Garland Books Overview

The Beach

The Khao San Road, Bangkok first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard’s first night there, in a low budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to ‘The Beach.’ The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden. Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover The Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents. Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach is a look at a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an unruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand.

The Tesseract

One of the most acclaimed thrillers of the year…
The ‘extraordinary’ national bestseller by the award winning author of The Beach.’Riveting…
The Tesseract offers myriad secret pleasures beyond its seemingly plot driven narrative of intrigue in the streets of Manila.’ San Francisco Chronicle Book Review’The Tesseract has the traits of a thriller, but it’s also a love story, a character study, a portrait of life among Manila’s street kids, even an experiment in narration…
a feverish, affecting, altogether captivating story…
. What really makes The Tesseract so gripping is the author’s dazzling performance as a storyteller not the bloody climaxes per se but the innovative techniques and deft changes of pace with which they are related. This is one of those rare novels that can be read for thrills but also taken apart and examined the way a jeweler does a fine watch. Garland also lavishes his characters with quirks that ring true, outbursts of human oddity that transform a moment that most authors would rush past into something memorable…
all but flawless, a tour de force of brilliant narration and psychological acuity.’ i The Washington Post ‘Virtuosic…
cinematic, poetic, terrifyingly precise.’ The New York Times Book Review’Bristles with suspense…
mature, intelligent, and rewarding.’ People’ A swift psychological thriller…
beautifully rendered.’ Spin’Powerful, exotic…
unfold’s like a corrupt and mysterious flower.’ J.G. Ballard’Thoroughly assured…
violently entertaining.’ Michiko Kakutani, New York Times’A steam engine of a narrative.’ Newsweek’Reminiscent of Graham Greene.’ The New Yorker’Delivers tremendous speed and style.’ Dallas Morning News’A dangerously hot novel.’ The Christian Science Monitor’Inventive and compelling.’ Los Angeles Times’A dashing tour de force.’ St. Louis Post Dispatch’Richly emotional.’ Harper’s Bazaar’ A page turner.’ Time Out New York

The Coma

Carl is brutally assaulted in an underground train while protecting a young woman from a gang of thugs. Beaten unconscious he lies for days in a hospital bed but appears to make a full recovery. On discharge from hospital Carl picks up the threads of his daily life, visiting friends, seeing his girlfriend until he starts to notice strange leaps in time, distortions in his experience. Is he truly interacting with the outside world, or could he still be in The Coma? So begins a dark pschological drama of the unconscious that raises profound questions about the boundary between the real and the imagined.

Sunshine

The Sun is dying, and mankind is dying with it. Our last hope is a spaceship and a crew of eight men and women. They carry a device which will breathe new life into the star. But, deep into their voyage, out of radio contact with Earth, their mission is starting to unravel. Soon, the crew are fighting not only for their lives, but their sanity.