Listen free for 30 days
-
Oryx and Crake
- MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 1
- Narrated by: John Chancer
- Series: The MaddAddam Trilogy (Published Order), Book 1, The MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 1
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £19.69
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Year of the Flood
- MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 2
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners - a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, the preservation of all species and the tending of the Earth - has long predicted the Waterless Flood. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have avoided it: the young trapeze-dancer, Ren, locked into the high-end sex club; and former SecretBurgers meat-slinger turned Gardener, Toby, barricaded into a luxurious spa. Have others survived?
-
-
A Sharp Divide
- By Isolde on 31-01-13
-
Woman on the Edge of Time
- By: Marge Piercy
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Often compared to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power - Woman on the Edge of Time has been hailed as a classic of speculative science fiction. Disturbing and forward thinking, Marge Piercy’s remarkable novel will speak to a new generation. Connie Ramos has been unjustly incarcerated in a mental institution with no hope of release. The authorities view her as a danger to herself and to others. Her family has given up on her. But Connie has a secret - a way to escape the confines of her cell. She can see the future.
-
-
Interesting vision but disappointing ending
- By ThatPersonOverThere on 22-07-21
-
Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Meera Syal
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nazneen is a teenager forced into an arranged marriage with an older man and misery seems to stretch ahead for her. Fearfully leaving the sultry oppression of her Bangladeshi village, Nazneen finds herself cloistered in a small flat in a high-rise block in the East End of London. Because she speaks no English, she is obliged to depend totally on her husband. But it becomes apparent that, of the two, she is the real survivor.…
-
-
Fascinating insight into Bangladeshi community
- By P1969 on 01-11-14
-
The Familiars
- By: Stacey Halls
- Narrated by: Katy Sobey
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband, Richard, is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn't supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy. Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby and to prove the physician wrong.
-
-
Wonderful book and beautifully read!
- By Rebecca on 07-08-19
-
The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 18 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even now, at the age of 82, Iris lives in the shadow cast by her younger sister Laura. Now poor and trying to cope with a failing body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death.
-
-
Beautifully brutal
- By JC Niala on 02-02-16
-
Alias Grace
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Shelley Thompson
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sixteen years have passed since Grace was locked up, at the age of 16, for the cold-blooded murders of her employer and his housekeeper/lover. Her alleged accomplice in the crimes, James McDermot, paid the extreme sentence of the law and was hanged on November 21, 1843. But some thought Grace was innocent, and her sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment. After a spell in the Lunatic Asylum she now claims to have no memory of the murders.
-
-
great story
- By Amazon Customer on 17-04-17
-
The Year of the Flood
- MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 2
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners - a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, the preservation of all species and the tending of the Earth - has long predicted the Waterless Flood. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have avoided it: the young trapeze-dancer, Ren, locked into the high-end sex club; and former SecretBurgers meat-slinger turned Gardener, Toby, barricaded into a luxurious spa. Have others survived?
-
-
A Sharp Divide
- By Isolde on 31-01-13
-
Woman on the Edge of Time
- By: Marge Piercy
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Often compared to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power - Woman on the Edge of Time has been hailed as a classic of speculative science fiction. Disturbing and forward thinking, Marge Piercy’s remarkable novel will speak to a new generation. Connie Ramos has been unjustly incarcerated in a mental institution with no hope of release. The authorities view her as a danger to herself and to others. Her family has given up on her. But Connie has a secret - a way to escape the confines of her cell. She can see the future.
-
-
Interesting vision but disappointing ending
- By ThatPersonOverThere on 22-07-21
-
Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Meera Syal
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nazneen is a teenager forced into an arranged marriage with an older man and misery seems to stretch ahead for her. Fearfully leaving the sultry oppression of her Bangladeshi village, Nazneen finds herself cloistered in a small flat in a high-rise block in the East End of London. Because she speaks no English, she is obliged to depend totally on her husband. But it becomes apparent that, of the two, she is the real survivor.…
-
-
Fascinating insight into Bangladeshi community
- By P1969 on 01-11-14
-
The Familiars
- By: Stacey Halls
- Narrated by: Katy Sobey
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband, Richard, is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn't supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy. Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby and to prove the physician wrong.
-
-
Wonderful book and beautifully read!
- By Rebecca on 07-08-19
-
The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 18 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even now, at the age of 82, Iris lives in the shadow cast by her younger sister Laura. Now poor and trying to cope with a failing body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death.
-
-
Beautifully brutal
- By JC Niala on 02-02-16
-
Alias Grace
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Shelley Thompson
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sixteen years have passed since Grace was locked up, at the age of 16, for the cold-blooded murders of her employer and his housekeeper/lover. Her alleged accomplice in the crimes, James McDermot, paid the extreme sentence of the law and was hanged on November 21, 1843. But some thought Grace was innocent, and her sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment. After a spell in the Lunatic Asylum she now claims to have no memory of the murders.
-
-
great story
- By Amazon Customer on 17-04-17
-
The Hippopotamus
- By: Stephen Fry
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ted Wallace is an old, sour, womanising, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic, but he has his faults too. Fired from his newspaper, months behind on his alimony payments and disgusted with a world that undervalues him, Ted seeks a few months repose and free drink at Swafford Hall, the country mansion of his old friend Lord Logan. But strange things have been going on at Swafford....
-
-
Extremely funny
- By Becki on 18-07-11
-
Snow Crash
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility - in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.
-
-
Lose yourself in another world
- By Lily the Pink on 26-09-15
-
The Handmaid's Tale
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Moss, Bradley Whitford, Amy Landecker, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs. Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of 21st-century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception.
-
-
Absolutely Incredible
- By Emma on 01-10-19
-
The Robber Bride
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride is inspired by The Robber Bridegroom, a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends.
-
-
Gripping
- By Mair on 26-06-15
-
The Heart Goes Last
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Mark Deakins
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Margaret Atwood puts the human heart to the ultimate test in an utterly brilliant new novel that is as visionary as The Handmaid's Tale and as richly imagined as The Blind Assassin. Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around - and fast.
-
-
Good but Atwood has done better
- By Reena Richards on 22-04-16
-
Wilderness Tips
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In each of these tales Margaret Atwood deftly illuminates the single instant that shapes a whole life: in a few brief pages we watch as characters progress from the vulnerabilities of adolescence through the passions of youth into the precarious complexities of middle age. By superimposing the past on the present, Atwood paints interior landscapes shaped by time, regret, and life's lost chances, endowing even the banal with a sense of mystery.
-
-
Only for the die hard Atwood fans
- By ::m:: on 22-11-21
-
Hag-Seed
- The Tempest Retold
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: R. H. Thomson
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Felix is at the top of his game as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he's staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And brewing revenge. After 12 years revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison.
-
-
Intriguing, entertaining and clever
- By Kirstine on 09-12-16
-
Cat's Eye
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 15 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elaine Risley, a painter, returns to Toronto to find herself overwhelmed by her past. Memories of childhood - unbearable betrayals and cruelties - surface relentlessly, forcing her to confront the spectre of Cordelia, once her best friend and tormentor, who has haunted her for 40 years. An exceptional novel from the winner of the 2000 Booker Prize.
-
-
Careless editing.
- By Eva O'Donnell on 16-02-14
-
Number9Dream
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Daniel York Loh
- Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Eiji Miyake's 20th birthday nears, he arrives in Tokyo with a mission - to locate the father he has never met. So begins a search that takes him into the seething city's underworld, its lost property offices and video arcades, and on a journey that zigzags from reality to the realm of dreams. But until Eiji has fallen in love and exorcised his childhood demons, the belonging he craves will remain, tantalizingly, just beyond his grasp.
-
-
An Adventure of Grand Proportions
- By Marguerite Krikhaar on 14-11-20
-
Heliopolis
- By: James Scudamore
- Narrated by: Dave John
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in a shantytown, Ludo leaves, and returns on the opposite side of its social divide. Now he sells unaffordable products to the underclass into which he was born. He has an obsessive love for his adoptive sister, while her husband is his only friend. This is the story of a man whose destiny controls him and takes him to the brink of madness.
-
The Glass Hotel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: Dylan Moore
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Glass Hotel begins at the end, with a fall: a woman plummeting from the deck of a cargo ship, her body quickly swallowed by the sea. It is a death that happens between continents, outside of jurisdictions: a death that will likely go unremarked and unsolved. Years earlier a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, taking with it the finances, hopes, and lives, of hundreds of people. The Glass Hotel is a novel about the interconnected lives tangled up in two very different tragedies.
-
-
Great Story but I wish the narrator didn’t attempt accents
- By Amazon Customer on 19-05-20
-
Ready Player One
- By: Ernest Cline
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place.
-
-
Awful fan fiction
- By "tommypot" on 26-07-18
Summary
Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2004.
Margaret Atwood's classic novel, The Handmaid's Tale, is about the future. Now, in Oryx and Crake, the future has changed: it's much worse. The narrator of this riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he's sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories?
Critic reviews
More from the same
What listeners say about Oryx and Crake
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- Martin
- 03-02-10
Engrossing, disturbing, amusing, entertaining
What a story this is. It is quite hard to review without giving away the plot too much but I listened to this in 2 days and would happily go back to the start right now. The Narration is first class, along with the plot and the characters. The story leaves you thinking about it when you are not listening, wondering "could that really happen?" to which the answer is most often yes it could. Highly, recommend this. I will remember this one for a long time to come and probably shudder as parts of it become true in the future.
56 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 18-05-17
Warning - descriptions of child abuse
Once the disturbing graphic scenes started I fast forwarded through them - but was on edge that there may be more so couldn't finish the book. Films with adult sexual content come with a warning. Why not this book?
If the author wishes to make a point by using this subject then that is her choice but there should be an official warning regarding what was explicit content in this book. Not impressed.
I read a handful of reviews before and then some after and found a reviewer with a similar view to mine. Wish I'd read it before. Although it shouldn't be left to a reviewer to leave a warning.
46 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Liz... Bristol
- 11-08-15
A book of ideas in sci-fi, not space opera.
I'm not familiar with Margaret Atwood's other work. Although clearly it fits into the sci-if genre, it is not a space opera. It is the sci-if of ideas and their effects upon society. The story does move back and forth over time, but in a limited way and not difficult to follow. The world is not ours, but a future or alternate version. I've just finished listening to this and shall move straight onto the middle book of the trilogy. Atwood has created a strange but familiar universe that is rigid and controlled. It is linear from childhood, but friendship can bridge the paths and the years.
John Chancer is probably not my ideal narrator (I prefer a deeper tone), but he does a very good job here. He manages to define the characters without using a range of accents.
Probably because Atwood is Canadian she uses quite a number of British rather than American terms (eg bum instead of ass or butt) which is a pleasant change.
Oryx and Crake is a great change of gear from the more run-of-the-mill detective or thriller novels that I like. Worth a listen if you enjoy a change. I did.
32 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sandor
- 31-01-14
Interesting and creative story
Where does Oryx and Crake rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
One of my better " reads".
What did you like best about this story?
The story unfolds in flash back form, something has happened , vast swathes of the earths population have disappeared and those that survive don't seem quite human, ,but what and who is to blame ?
Any additional comments?
Be warned this is the first in a trilogy and the story does not resolve itself in this book one, so you're basically committing yourself to reading ( listening too) all three. The story does meander, at times you begin to wonder what is the point of some of the tributaries you end up exploring . I however made it to the end of number three so was suitably gripped, although I did feel by book three it was beginning to plod along a little predictably, book one ( this one ) is definitely the best.
23 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ca
- 09-12-20
STILL NO WARNING!!!!
I DECIDED THAT SINCE AUDIBLE HAS NEITHER EMAILED OR PUT ANY WARNING ON THIS BOOK THAT I WOULD DO IT MYSELF
"WARNING"
THIS BOOK CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT OF CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION
22 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Isabelle Gill
- 08-07-15
A slow burner but worth persevering with
Took me a while to get into, and the plot is deliberately opaque to begin with, but it's worth persevering with. An interest idea of the future - and Chancer reads it well.
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Miss
- 27-07-18
Just can't listen to the chanting children!!
Sadly didn't get through it because the chanting grated so much!
It's in every chapter too!
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sigrin
- 04-10-16
Genetics nightmare
This is not Sci-fi or a prophecy of things to come, however it is certainly food for thought if we continue along our present scientific pathway. Thank goodness we have medical ethics to maintain some control at present.
Margaret Atwood is not an easy author to listen to, but I seem to come back for more!
I will continue with this trilogy, but need a break to digest this one before I start the next.
Narration of both male and female voices and accents is good, although I am not a fan of American narrators.
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Sarah-Jane
- 08-02-06
Oryx and Crake (Unabridged)
This is really worth listening to. Several important contemporary issues are explored in science fiction form, and the narrator delivers the story very well indeed.
15 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 19-08-15
I tried
I really tried hard to listen to this, because the idea seemed a good one. Who knows, the storyline might even be brilliant. I've had to guess. But I couldn't force myself to listen to one more word; the narrator seems limited in his voices to the "melancholy" one and the "whining" one and it was a choice between stopping listening and pulling my own ears off.
41 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Jane F. Clifton
- 21-03-21
I’m confused
What happened to the original and BRILLIANT narrator of this trilogy? I bought HER’S, not this narration. Is audible just able to change narrators without letting you know? What if the narrator (e.g. Tom Hanks, Gabriel Byrne, Juliet Stevenson) was the very reason you bought it in the 1st place? (ps my stars are meaningless - I just hit them to post)
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall

- Renny
- 29-03-06
Fantastic
I really enjoyed this title, it was so good that it only lasted 2 long listening sessions! I only wish there were more *unabridged* works from Margaret Atwood available at audible.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Anonymous User
- 19-05-20
It was alright
I haven’t finished the book but i’m so lost with that’s actually going on and that’s probably my fault but to me the story line is pretty confusing, some parts have been really interesting tho
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Maritta Helten
- 13-02-20
favourite!
though it took me some time to figure it out, it now is one of my favourite books. Even better than the Handmaids tale.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- MrMonterrubio
- 01-04-15
A breath taking dystopia !!!
One of the best end-of-the-world books out there. Atwood is a genius at storytelling, she moves from present to past like a boss
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Reinhold
- 09-08-14
John Chancer really brings the story to life
What made the experience of listening to Oryx and Crake the most enjoyable?
This book works well as a standalone -- better than the other two books -- but it does get even better as part of the MaddAdams trilogy.
John Chancer does an excellent job bringing Jimmy and the crakers to life. When i think about the book I keep hearing his saying "Ohhh Jimmy" as the crackers, and it brings a smile to my face every time.
This is a book in which the narrator ads another layer to the story.
Storywise it tells you a lot about Jimmy but less about the world. The two following books flesh out the world better.
Good book and I highly recommend it.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Denise Litchfield
- 06-11-12
I'll listen to anything read by John Chancer
As a Margaret Atwood fan, it was a double whammy to discover it read by another favorite, John Cancer. His warm voice kept me in my seat.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Rachel Ross
- 04-04-16
Grotesque objectification of women
Sexist view point of lead character and sickening themes of child pornography - couldn't finish it.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- patricia
- 01-06-12
pure fantasy
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
only if you have time to fill and an imagination.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
liked the ending.
Which scene was your favorite?
when he went into the zone
Did Oryx and Crake inspire you to do anything?
no
Any additional comments?
i enjoyed because i kept wondering what would happen next. futuristic fantasy.