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- Reedsy
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Buy on Amazon. While it was published in 1949, this famous work is predictably set in 1984. Orwell’s world foresees only three continental-sized nations, at least one of which is overseen by an ubiquitous, watchful government.
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Buy on Amazon. Set in a world that many of us avid readers would find nightmarish, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is the story of Guy Montag, a “fireman” who is becoming disillusioned with his job — to put it simply, he’s assigned to set fire to books, rather than put fires out.
- The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Buy on Amazon. In this once-futuristic world — the book was published in 1985 about the near future — America is taken over by a religious sect, and the order of the country is pushed back several centuries.
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Buy on Amazon. In contrast to the well-crafted orders we’ve encountered thus far, The Road transports us to a universe shattered by an unnamed catastrophe.
- Karen Cicero
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Hailed by the New York Times as “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction,” Margaret Atwood crafted a novel that feels as relevant today as it did when it was published in 1985.
- 1984 by George Orwell. While nearly four decades have passed since the title year, this book’s themes of surveillance and censorship are still relevant today.
- The Stand by Stephen King. One of the most relatable dystopian books, Stephen King‘s 1978 bestseller is set in a world forever altered by a pandemic. A strain of super-flu will kill most people in the world within a few weeks, and the few who are left will need a leader.
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Twenty years after a pandemic changed the world forever, Kirsten Raymonde and a group of actors and musicians try to keep the arts alive.
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953) A book about the burning of books. Powerful words about the power of the written word. In 1953, Ray Bradbury gave the world a chilling view of a possible future based all too deeply in the truths of the past and present—the bonfires of the vanities throughout history leading up to the Nazi book burnings just a decade earlier and the Senate Subcommittee of Juvenile Delinquency that was about to launch an attack on comic books.
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949) When we say something is Orwellian, what we are truly saying is that say it exhibits the authoritarian specter of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Big Brother.
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932) Predating George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and, in some ways, proving even more prescient, Aldous Huxley’s vicious undoing of utopia proves that the most brutal deaths can come from the softest touch.
- Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945) Not all classics are worth their continued inclusion in the canon, but George Orwell’s Animal Farm, one of the 20 century’s seminal dystopian narratives, continues to offer lasting significance.
- 1984 George Orwell.
- The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) Suzanne Collins.
- Brave New World Aldous Huxley.
- Divergent (Divergent, #1) Veronica Roth (Goodreads Author)
Dystopia is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. It often features multiple kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions, and a state of constant warfare or violence. Dystopia is a form of literature that explores social and political structures.
Jun 15, 2023 · Including The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale, here are our top 20 favorite dystopian reads. Novels have the capacity to captivate our imaginations while also engaging in human themes and ...
We received guidance from Jenny C. Mann and Ursula K. Heise, professors of English at Cornell and UCLA, respectively, both of whom study dystopian literature, and limited our selections to books with some connection to Earth. Beyond that, the sky was the limit.
