Neanderthal Nation

A vivid, dystopic page-turner as terrifying and disturbing as The Handmaid’s Tale and as heart-pounding as Jurassic Park. 

In the world of the near future, artificial intelligence has become an integral part of citizens' daily lives, creating ever widening inequality between social classes. Gala Salinas, a young and highly respected scientist, is at work researching the uses of cloning in the fight to cure malaria and other deadly diseases. After a series of successful experiments which earn her international prestige, she decides to use her work to cross the final frontier and create a clone of neanderthal man, the early species of human which disappeared from the face of the Earth tens of millions of years ago.   

The ethical dilemmas posed by the revival of another species of human, as well as Gala's obsession with cloning, are intertwined with a narrative which shifts between two different time frames. The first, set at the end of the palaeolithic era, follows the Aitz clan, a family of neanderthals who come into contact with tribes of modern humans and, in doing so, must confront the danger of the extinction of their kind. In the second, Dr Ruth Peres is attempting to establish a network of healthcare centres across the Central African Republic. The threads of these three electrifying stories converge to reveal unexpected consequences and moral quandaries when cloning human beings becomes a reality.