The Last Neanderthal
A Novel

Quotes

PRAISE FOR THE LAST NEANDERTHAL:

"Arresting... Gripping... This vivid...novel makes clear how much we carry on from those who existed long before us."
—Emily Gray Tedrowe, USA Today

"Masterfully examines our connections to our evolutionary cousins...a novel to cherish."—Trevor Corkum, Toronto Star

"A powerful, warm and thought-provoking book that artfully blends facts with fiction to put flesh on many abstract scientific debates."—Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

"Claire Cameron reunites us with our past, with the beginning of humanity. In this book I lived next to people who populated the earth a very long time ago and have long since vanished completely. To make you feel for them, and what is more: feel with them is a great achievement. The Last Neanderthal is one of those novels that opens the world to you in a different way. And after you finish reading, this world will never look the same to you again."
—Herman Koch, bestselling author of The Dinner

"The Last Neanderthal is astonishing. With delicacy and tenderness, Claire Cameron imagines the struggles of a Neanderthal family to sustain itself physically and psychologically in the face of extinction. As we follow Girl, her mother and brothers, and a mysterious stray called Runt, we are put in touch with what is most ancient and noble in human nature. At the same time, the parallel contemporary narrative shows us how little, over the eons, the human heart has changed. I'm thrilled by Cameron's adventurous and deeply empathic tale, an example of what fiction at its best can do."
—Pamela Erens, author of Eleven Hours

"Claire Cameron's newest novel, The Last Neanderthal, is fascinating, insightful and poignant; a moving narrative of the last survivors of a harsh and unforgiving environment that is both exotic and achingly familiar. It is a story of our profound connectedness to our ancestors, exploring the ultimate question of what it means to be truly 'human.'"—Kathleen Kent, author of The Heretic's Daughter

"The Last Neanderthal is a book like no other. Claire Cameron effortlessly inhabits the worlds of two very different women-a female Neanderthal desperate to survive and an archeologist who fears losing control of her dig site-and shows us they are not that different after all. A powerful novel that will make you cry. And laugh, too."
—Marcy Dermansky, author of The Red Car

"This rich, literary, science-based imagining of Neanderthal life intrigued me from the start. The parallels between two women navigating complex lives from across time and space-and across a narrow species boundary-is captivating in itself. But more than this, while reading The Last Neanderthal, I felt myself standing with new feet within our human lineage. This book makes me want to pay attention to the senses that are in our blood-an alertness to vision, smell, touch, weather, the presence of other creatures-that can come naturally to us as a Homo sapiens, but have been lost from inattention and lack of use. I find myself walking into the world with a heightened awareness of what it means to be fully human."
—Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Mozart's Starling

"Thoroughly immersed in the recent explosion in knowledge-and speculation-about our closest kin."
—Brian Bethune, Maclean's (Canada)

"The women of Cameron's The Last Neanderthal are fierce, whatever their time period. This meditation on motherhood, passion and survival is lush and lovingly detailed, creating a world that's frighteningly accurate and reassuringly heartfelt. Couldn't put it down."—Eden Robinson, author of Monkey Beach