Dystopian Literary Fiction

Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient - frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism.

Big Brother is watching you.... 1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party’s power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party’s department for propaganda, Winston Smith’s job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair.

The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in each other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant.

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America, and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.

Insomnia has claimed everyone Biggs knows. Even his beloved wife, Carolyn, succumbed before disappearing into the quickly collapsing world. Yet Biggs can still sleep, and dream, so he sets out to find her. He ventures out into a world ransacked by mass confusion and desperation, where he meets others struggling against the tide of sleeplessness. Chase and Jordan are devising a scheme to live off their drug-store lootings; Lila is a high school student wandering the streets in an owl mask; Felicia abandons the sanctuary of a sleep research center to try to protect her family.

Miriam was raised in a society without children. To offset the devastation of climate change, state-of-the-art birth control has made daycares and playgrounds things of the past. As tempting as the government inducements are to remain child-free, Miriam’s curiosity about the people who “drop out” of society to become parents grows. When she finds a like-minded partner, she must choose between the rewarding comforts she knows and the unknowable mysteries of being a mother.

Alice, the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper in Kilkenny, grows up watching her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities—and she vows that she will never suffer the same fate. In time, she discovers she has a flair for making money, and takes her father's flourishing business to new heights. But as her riches and stature grow, so too do rumors about her private life. By the time she marries her fourth husband—the three earlier are dead—a storm of local gossip and resentment culminates in a life-threatening accusation.

The year is 2084, and that famous Margaret Thatcher quote has become a reality: There really is no such thing as society. No one speaks to anyone else. No one looks at anyone else. People don’t collaborate, they only compete...It all sounds rather morbid, does it not? But please don’t despair, there is hope, and it comes in the form of our hero: Renee Ann Blanca. Wishing to fill the society-shaped hole in her life, our Renee does the unthinkable: She goes in search of human company!

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has lain the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world. But when their father, the only man they've ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day two men and a boy wash ashore.

To Chinese American teenager Chuntao, New Lake is a beautiful haven where she can hunt for treasures once swallowed up by a big flood. But when she’s caught scavenging by her biology teacher, a woman whose own past has been swept away, Chuntao is faced with an imponderable question: Which world was better - the ideal one she never knew or the destroyed one that now belongs to her?

In the modern world, life lessons are not always as black and white as who wins a race between a tortoise and a hare. Modern Day Fables features eleven lessons for us adults, we who face challenges that present a palette of grays in which the morals are often more gritty, trampled on, hard fought, hard won, and not always glorious. In these eleven fables, travel the subterranean world of lessons not oft told because they are challenging to the status quo, and championing of the individual who stands alone amid the world around us. Decide what you think, who wins and who loses, who stands ...

Charlie Johns has been snatched from his home on Earth and delivered to the strange future world of Ledom. Technology has triumphed over hunger, overpopulation, pollution, and even time and space. But there is a change Charlie finds even more shocking: Gender is a thing of the past. Gone are the tensions between male and female. Gone is the human preoccupation with sex.

In this darkly comic and surreal collection from celebrated author Alissa Nutting, misfit women scramble for agency in a series of uncanny circumstances. Throughout these breathtakingly creative 17 stories spread across time, space, and differing planes of reality, we encounter a host of women and girls in a wide range of unusual jobs. A space cargo deliverywoman enlists the help of her cybersex partner to release her mother from cryogenic prison.

Cuando las puertas de la furgoneta se cerraron de golpe tras Defred al final de El cuento de la criada, los lectores no tenían forma de saber cuál iba a ser su futuro: la libertad, la prisión o la muerte. Con la publicación de Los testamentos, la espera ha terminado. Margaret Atwood recupera la historia quince años después de que Defred se adentrara en lo desconocido, con los testimonios asombrosos de tres narradoras del mundo de Gilead.

Keita Ali has nothing: no bank account, no papers, no legal identity. A runner, he has fled home - a brutal dictatorship that produces the world's fastest marathoners - to live as an illegal refugee in a wealthy Western nation, surviving on winnings from local races. But the government is cracking down on illegal immigrants, so Keita - who will be executed if he is deported to his homeland - goes underground.

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and '90s San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it's officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird. While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and metatextual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility.

Children of the New World introduces listeners to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago.

Hig, bereaved and traumatised after global disaster, has three things to live for—his dog Jasper, his aggressive but helpful neighbour and his Cessna aeroplane. He's just about surviving, so long as he only takes his beloved plane for short journeys, and saves his remaining fuel. But, just once, he picks up a message from another pilot, and eventually the temptation to find out who else is still alive becomes irresistible. So he takes his plane over the horizon, knowing that he won't have enough fuel to get back.

Often compared to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power - Woman on the Edge of Time has been hailed as a classic of speculative science fiction. Disturbing and forward thinking, Marge Piercy’s remarkable novel will speak to a new generation. Connie Ramos has been unjustly incarcerated in a mental institution with no hope of release. The authorities view her as a danger to herself and to others. Her family has given up on her. But Connie has a secret - a way to escape the confines of her cell. She can see the future.

Ember in the Machine (Book One of The Resonant Archive Trilogy) In the far future, memory is power. And the architects of silence are about to lose control. Five centuries from now, humanity thrives across a colonized solar system—linked by artificial resonance, DNA augmentation, and an engineered culture of forgetfulness. The Mneme Network governs memory. The media fabricates truth. And Kael Surn, the aging architect of this fragile peace, prepares to erase the last traces of collective grief. But his granddaughter, Aurora Surn, a former elite diplomat turned underground rebel, has ...