The sun brightens in the east, reddening the blue-grey haze that marks the distant ocean. The vultures roosting on the hydro poles fan out their wings to dry them. the air smells faintly of burning. The waterless flood - a manmade plague - has ended the world. But two young women have survived: Ren, a young dancer trapped where she worked, in an upmarket sex club (the cleanest dirty girls in town); and Toby, who watches and waits from her rooftop garden. Is anyone else out there? 'Atwood knows how to show us ourselves, but the mirror she holds up to life does more than reflect . . . The Year of the Flood isn't prophecy, but it is eerily possible' Jeanette Winterson 'Margaret Atwood has outdone - and outsung - herself this time. The Year