The Last Man

Written while Mary Shelley was in a self-imposed lockdown after the loss of her husband and children, and in the wake of the climate-changing Mount Tambora eruption and a raging cholera outbreak, The Last Man is the first end-of-mankind novel, an early work of climate fiction, and a prophetic depiction of environmental change. Set in the late twenty-first century, the book tells' of a deadly pandemic that leaves a lone survivor, following his journey through a post apocalyptic world that's devoid of humanity and reclaimed by nature.
But rather than give in to despair, Shelley uses the now-ubiquitous end-times plot to imagine a new world where communities and alternative ways of being stand in for self-important politicians serving corrupt institutions, and where nature reigns over humanity. Shelley's second major novel after Frankenstein, The Last Man looks ahead to a greener future in which our species develops new relationships with nonhuman life and the planet.

The landmark novel by Mary Shelley that invented the human extinction genre and initiated climate fiction.