The bestselling, award-winning author of The Midnight Library offers his funniest, most devastating dark comedy yet, a “silly, sad, suspenseful, and soulful” (Philadelphia Inquirer) novel that’s “full of heart” (Entertainment Weekly).
When an extra-terrestrial visitor arrives on Earth, his first impressions of the human species are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a prominent mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor is eager to complete the gruesome task assigned him and hurry home to his own utopian planet, where everyone is omniscient and immortal.
He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, their capacity for murder and war, and is equally baffled by the concepts of love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this strange species than he had thought. Disguised as Martin, he drinks wine, reads poetry, develops an ear for rock music, and a taste for peanut butter. Slowly, unexpectedly, he forges bonds with Martin’s family. He begins to see hope and beauty in the humans’ imperfection, and begins to question the very mission that brought him there.
Praised by The New York Times as a “novelist of great seriousness and talent,” author Matt Haig delivers an unlikely story about human nature and the joy found in the messiness of life on Earth. The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable tale that playfully and movingly explores the ultimate subject—ourselves.
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“Narrator Mark Meadows portrays the
alien visitor at the heart of this fascinating story, adroitly vocalizing the
creature’s evolution. A native from the utopian planet Vonadoria is sent to
Earth to take the place of a math professor and bury his discovery: the
solution to a mathematical conundrum that promises to elevate humans—to the
detriment of the rest of the universe. As voiced by Meadows, the ersatz
professor, Andrew Martin, at first speaks with a clipped British accent as he
describes what repulses him about humanity. But as he slowly goes native, his
speech becomes, well, more human, including instances of slang and profanity.
This production examines what it means to be human, and Meadows does a
remarkable job of humanizing its extraterrestrial protagonist.”
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AudioFile