The Last Man is Mary Shelley’s third published novel, and is now recognized as one of the earliest and most ambitious works of dystopian, postapocalyptic prose fiction. Set more than two centuries into Shelley’s imagined future, the novel unfolds as a frame narrative written from the perspective of the title character, Lionel Verney. Through his account, Shelley traces the course of a mysterious, fast-spreading pandemic that originates in the Nile Valley in Africa ultimately leads to the near-total extinction of the human species by the end of the twenty-first century. Although the novel received harsh and dismissive reviews upon publication, it has in recent years begun to earn sustained critical attention for the remarkable range of its prescient engagements. These include its proto-feminist portraits and literary allusions; its varied depictions of exile, displacement, and mass migration; its anticipation of global refugee crises; and its sustained attention to climate change, and fluid gender and sexuality. Equally significant are the novel’s sharp critiques of anthropocentrism, nationalism, colonialism, and racial capitalism.