Extinction

Description

He is a new kind of human He may mean the end for the rest of us... One bright morning in Washington D.C., the US President learns of a terrifying new threat to national security. Soon afterwards, American mercenary Jonathan Yeager is asked to lead a team into the Congo to eliminate a mysterious enemy - a job which will help him pay for treatment for his dying son. But when they reach Africa, the threat turns out to be a three-year-old child named Akili: the next step in human evolution. The soldiers are under orders to kill the boy before his full potential can be realised. Yet Akili's advanced knowledge might be the only hope Yeager has to save his son's life... With time running out to choose a side, Yeager must decide whether to follow his orders or to save a creature who may not be as harmless or innocent as he appears. Because Akili is already the smartest being on the planet, with the power to either save humanity - or destroy it. [This novel was first published in 2014 as GENOCIDE OF ONE.]

Kazuaki Takano studied Film Studies at Los Angeles City College and has worked for many years as a scriptwriter in Japan. Takano's debut novel, Thirteen Steps, won the 47th Edogawa Rampo Award for best mystery of the year in 2001. EXTINCTION was nominated for the Naoki Prize and won the Yamada Futaro Award, selling 340,000 copies since its publication in April 2011.

Richly researched, shockingly violent, and smoothly translated from the original Japanese, GENOCIDE OF ONE tempers the sleek super-science of a Michael Crichton novel with a healthy dose of moral indignation - Financial Times