"Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood

This is a heavy book.  And disturbing.  And deceptively easy to read.  And full of multi-layered messaging that needs to be discovered by the readers using their own brains.  But one would expect nothing less from Mrs. Atwood, one of the greatest literary writers alive today.  This book is not meant for entertainment, although simple souls could take it as such - it is definitely written in an easily-readable style, despite the occasional "big word" showing Mrs. Atwood's utter command of the English language.

Snowman used to be known as Jimmy, when growing up in the Corporate Compounds where the privileged lived, employed by mega corporations, well-fed, well-protected, watching extreme violence, rape, mutilation, executions, child porn and other appropriate stuff allowed on the future internet.  His best friend was Glenn, or Crake, as the nickname came from one of the many MMORPG games they were playing together.  Outside of the compounds were the "pleeblands" - for the ordinaries, the rabble, the consumers who were squeezed out of their last dollar by the products and advertising campaigns coming out of the Compounds.

There are different compounds: some produce new animals, like the pigoons, genetically modified pigs to grow human tissue so that they can be used as farms for human transplants, the rakunks, a playful combination of raccoon and skunk that doesn't have the bestiality of the raccoon, nor the stench of the skunk, and is the new popular pet animal for the privileged, or the wolfogs, acting playful as a dog from a distance, but tearing apart anyone that comes at a biting proximity; other compounds produce human enhancement, like better skin, more hair, youth potions of a motley variety, all intended to be gobbled by the indiscriminate masses of the pleebs.

Crake goes onto an elite school, and then gets employed by a top genetic modification company, while Jimmy becomes a lowly ad-copy writer, but he's good at it.  They both love Oryx, the little girl from that peculiar child porn movie they watched together, with eyes that pierce through the screen into their souls.  Crake locates Oryx when he grows up, and has more and more resources available to him, because of the perceived monetization of his intelligence.  Oryx's job, besides being a sexual relief for Crake, and later Jimmy as well, is to strip naked and educate the "Crakers", a new, benevolent, vegan race of humans that Crake has created in the lab.

But there's more, much, much more.  Although far less graphic than "The Windup Girl" - "Crake and Oryx" manages to be more disturbing, on a far deeper, believable level that would make any non-braindead, non-tvhypnotized human thinking for a long time to come.