Books by Laura Jean McKay
“the premise of The Animals in that Country is that there is a pandemic, but it’s a virus that enables humans to start to understand the speech of animals. But not in a Doctor Dolittle way, when we can just chat to them. It’s more like the Wittgenstein idea that ‘If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.’ I think it was that breath of imagination that really appealed to the judges. How would you imagine animal speech? They also talked about the joy of the writing in this book. The imaginative feat of trying to understand how an animal might communicate, and what that communication might be.” Read more...
The Best Science Fiction of 2021: The Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist
Tom Hunter, Journalist
Interviews where books by Laura Jean McKay were recommended
The Best Science Fiction of 2021: The Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist, recommended by Tom Hunter
Every year, the director of the Arthur C Clarke Award talks us through their six book shortlist. The 2021 crop of the best science fiction books features a “deliciously pulpy” space opera, a time travel story for young adults, and a cacophonous tale of talking animals. What they all have in common is that they are by debut authors, says Tom Hunter: they represent a new generation of sci fi writing.
