Best Seller
The Coma
By Alex Garland
By Alex Garland
Paperback
$24.00
Published on Jul 05, 2005 | 208 Pages
When Carl awakens from a coma after being attacked on a subway train, life around him feels unfamiliar, even strange.
He arrives at his best friend’s house without remembering how he got there; he seems to be having an affair with his secretary, which is pleasant but surprising. He starts to notice distortions in his experience, strange leaps in his perception of time. Is he truly reacting with the outside world, he wonders, or might he be terribly mistaken? So begins a dark psychological drama that raises questions about the the human psyche, dream versus reality, and the boundaries of consciousness.
As Carl grapples with his predicament, Alex Garland—author of The Beach and the screenplay for 28 Days Later, plays with conventions and questions our assumptions about the way we exist in the world, even as it draws us into the unsettling and haunting book about a lost suitcase and a forgotten identity.
He arrives at his best friend’s house without remembering how he got there; he seems to be having an affair with his secretary, which is pleasant but surprising. He starts to notice distortions in his experience, strange leaps in his perception of time. Is he truly reacting with the outside world, he wonders, or might he be terribly mistaken? So begins a dark psychological drama that raises questions about the the human psyche, dream versus reality, and the boundaries of consciousness.
As Carl grapples with his predicament, Alex Garland—author of The Beach and the screenplay for 28 Days Later, plays with conventions and questions our assumptions about the way we exist in the world, even as it draws us into the unsettling and haunting book about a lost suitcase and a forgotten identity.
Author
Alex Garland
Alex Garland is a British novelist, screenwriter, and director. His first novel, The Beach, was published in 1996 and drew on his experiences as a backpacker. The novel quickly became a cult classic and was made into a film by Danny Boyle, with Leonardo DiCaprio. The Tesseract, Garland’s second novel, was published in 1998. This was also made into a film, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers. In 2003, he wrote the screenplay for Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, starring Cillian Murphy. His third novel, The Coma, was published in 2004 and was illustrated with woodcuts by his father.In 2007 he wrote the screenplay for the film Sunshine—his second screenplay to be directed by Danny Boyle and star Cillian Murphy as lead. Garland also served as an executive producer on 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later. Garland also wrote the first screenplay for Halo, the film adaptation of the successful video game franchise by Bungie Studios. He made his directorial debut with Ex Machina, a 2014 feature film based on his own story and screenplay.
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