Escape Series by Manjula Padmanabhan

In a country where women have been exterminated, one little girl remains alive. Her name is Meiji. Her uncles, Eldest, Middle and Youngest, have raised her against all odds. As her body buds into puberty, her aging guardians realize they cannot protect her from the vicious Generals who now dominate their world, assisted by artificially created shaves called Drones and marauding bands of witless Boy Soldiers who rove a brutalized landscape through which Youngest and Meiji must travel to escape... moreIn a country where women have been exterminated, one little girl remains alive. Her name is Meiji. Her uncles, Eldest, Middle and Youngest, have raised her against all odds. As her body buds into puberty, her aging guardians realize they cannot protect her from the vicious Generals who now dominate their world, assisted by artificially created shaves called Drones and marauding bands of witless Boy Soldiers who rove a brutalized landscape through which Youngest and Meiji must travel to escape. Youngest will have to dig deep into his resources to ensure their survival. But he has a greater challenge along the way: explaining to Meiji what it means to be female in an all-male world and why she must learn to control the powerful forces that are being unleashed within herself as she matures. A gripping adventure and oddly poignant romance, Escape is a rigorously imagined, philosophically powerful book that takes a raw fact of our present world-the declining sex-ratio-and turns it into a vision of the future. At its core, though, it is an examination of love, of growing pains, of sexuality. From the writer of the Onassis Award-winning play Harvest, a novel that is disturbing, rich and humane. less

This is the story of Meiji – the only girl who has remained untouched and unmutilated in a country that has savaged its entire female population. Having saved her from certain death in the new Dark Age that has come upon the world, her gaurdian, Youngest, has transported her to the only place where she can remain safe – an Island where wounded girls are, sometimes literally, stitched back together and given a new life... moreThis is the story of Meiji – the only girl who has remained untouched and unmutilated in a country that has savaged its entire female population. Having saved her from certain death in the new Dark Age that has come upon the world, her gaurdian, Youngest, has transported her to the only place where she can remain safe – an Island where wounded girls are, sometimes literally, stitched back together and given a new life. But the Island itself is a menacing place, and Meiji may be in more danger than ever before. To see what has become of his beloved girl, Youngest must find a way to infiltrate its odd environs while keeping the constantly assaulting voice in his head at bay. His struggles against the surreal inhabitants of a world gone wrong and with his own transformed identity only serve to steel his efforts to find the girl, and escape once more...The Island of Lost Girls showcases, yet again, Manjula Padmanabhan’s genius at creating searing landscapes and alternate, sometimes brutal, worlds while reaffirming the beauty and the ugliness, the cruelty and the tremendous compassion that essentially make us human. less