Synopsis: In this astonishing novel, an entirely new departure in her writing, P. D. James imagines a future England where human infertility has spread like a plague. By the year 2021 no babies have been born for a quarter of a century, not since year Omega, anywhere in the inhabited world. The very old are being driven to despair and suicide, and the final generation of the young are beautiful bur violent and cruel. The middle- aged are trying to sustain normality under the absolute rule of Xan Lyppiatt, the charismatic dictator and Warden of England. Theo Faron is an Oxford historian and cousin of the Warden, living a solitary, sel-regarding life in the ominous atmosphere. By chance at Evensong in Magdalen he mets a young woman, one of a small group who seek to challenge the power of the Warden's regime. Theo's life is dramatically changed and he is drawn into almost unimaginable horrors...