Last Night in Montreal
The Singer’s Gun
The Lola Quartet
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2014 by Emily St. John Mandel
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
St. John Mandel, Emily, 1979–
Station eleven : a novel / Emily St. John Mandel. —First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-385-35330-4 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-385-35331-1 (eBook)
1. Actors—Fiction. 2. Time travel—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.4.S727S83 2014 813’.6—dc23 2014003560
Front-of-jacket photograph by Michael Turek/Gallery Stock
Jacket design by Abby Weintraub
v3.1
IN MEMORY OF EMILIE JACOBSON
The bright side of the planet moves toward darkness
And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,
And for me, now as then, it is too much.
There is too much world.
—Czeslaw Milosz
Contents
1. The Theater
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
3. I Prefer You With a Crown
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
4. The Starship
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
5. Toronto
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
6. The Airplanes
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
7. The Terminal
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
8. The Prophet
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
9. Station Eleven
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
1
THE KING STOOD in a pool of blue light, unmoored. This was act 4 of
“Dost thou know me?” the actor playing Gloucester asked.
“I remember thine eyes well enough,” Arthur said, distracted by the child version of Cordelia, and this was when it happened. There was a change in his face, he stumbled, he reached for a column but misjudged the distance and struck it hard with the side of his hand.
“Down from the waist they are Centaurs,” he said, and not only was this the wrong line but the delivery was wheezy, his voice barely audible. He cradled his hand to his chest like a broken bird. The actor portraying Edgar was watching him closely. It was still possible at that moment that Arthur was acting, but in the first row of the orchestra section a man was rising from his seat. He’d been training to be a paramedic. The man’s girlfriend tugged at his sleeve, hissed, “Jeevan! What are you
“The wren goes to’t,” Arthur whispered, and Jeevan, who knew the play very well, realized that the actor had skipped back twelve lines. “The wren …”
“Sir,” the usher said, “would you please …”
