Since the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President, the popularity of dystopian literature has risen dramatically. For example, sales of 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale have soared. It seems readers are searching for stories that describe what’s currently happening and what has the possibility of happening due to recent events.
Various publications have prepared lists of dystopian books
and I thought I’d recommend a couple of sites:
The Savvy Reader
includes both Orwell and Atwood and also mentions Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel which I reviewed (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/2016/01/review-of-station-eleven-by-emily-st.html).
Refinery29 also
suggests Orwell, Atwood and St. John Mandel.
Wikipedia lists dystopian novels chronologically.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/americanism-us-writers-imagine-fascist-future-fiction
The Guardian listed books about American authoritarianism.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/americanism-us-writers-imagine-fascist-future-fiction
The Guardian listed books about American authoritarianism.
Over the years, I have read and taught a number of dystopian
novels. Here are a dozen authors I recommend:
The Handmaid's Tale
and the MaddAddam Trilogy (Oryx and Crake,
The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam) by Margaret Atwood
Fahrenheit 451 by
Ray Bradbury
La Planète des Singes by Pierre Boulle
The Hunger Games Trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching
Fire, and Mockingjay) by Suzanne
Collins
Brave New World by
Aldous Huxley
The Children of Men
by P. D. James
It Can't Happen Here
by Sinclair Lewis
The Road by Cormac
McCarthy
Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Station Eleven by
Emily St. John Mandel
Zazen by Vanessa
Veselka
The Chrysalids by
John Wyndham
If you don’t have the time to read a book, how about a short
story? "By the Waters of
Babylon" is a post-apocalyptic short story by Stephen Vincent Benét. You can read it here: https://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/benetsv-thirteen01-watersofbabylon/benetsv-thirteen01-watersofbabylon-00-h-dir/benetsv-thirteen01-watersofbabylon-00-h.html.
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