Top 5 Dystopian Novels

A whirlwind tour of this ever-evolving genre...

The definition of dystopia is “an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.” It’s a genre that has faced many a book burning or banning because often the imagined future of a dystopian novel is rooted in the injustice or imbalance an author sees his present time… and as George Orwell beautifully describes in 1984, “You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.”

I love this genre because there’s so much scope for creativity. It’s like the writer’s equivalent of watching a master composer create a great symphony. Writing dystopia requires incredible imagination because you can’t just draw on settings you know – you must create an entirely new world. This is why reading this genre often feels like a mind-bending rollercoaster where your thoughts are so provoked it’s hard to shake the story long after you’ve finished it.

In this top five, I’ve tried to pick a wide range of concepts written by different generations to give readers new to the genre a whirlwind introduction…

1. 1984 by George Orwell

One of my favourite books of all time! Winston Smith loves to write but writing is forbidden in London in 1984. All creativity and independent thought is outlawed and the ruling party - Big Brother – has placed its citizens under constant surveillance. Citizens are even watched in their own homes through their TV screens. The oppression is evident in 1984 from the very first page and as we witness Winston breaking the rules and writing in his illegal journal, you just know he’s going to slowly unravel and get himself in serious trouble. There’s a love story interwoven with Winston’s tale of demise and it’s a truly masterful novel in every way.

2. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Emily St John Mandel is a master storyteller. Her characters are so relevant and believable to this time that when she takes us on a ride through her imagined and disastrous pandemic, there isn’t a second when your belief in the story slips. She flips between the period when the world was falling into chaos at the beginning of the outbreak and twenty years later after vast numbers have died and the world has returned to a medieval way of life with only the remnants of buildings and roads to remind everyone of the past. The story is beautifully woven between these two eras as we follow the story of a professional actor during the outbreak and a group of amateur travelling actors twenty years later.

3. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

A dystopian classic and a must-read, Farenheit 451 tells the story of a future America where books are outlawed and firemen burn any that are found. We follow the story of Guy Montag, a fireman who out of curiosity starts hiding some of the books he uncovers. The more he reads, the more disillusioned he becomes with his society and much like Winston in 1984, one small act of rebellion leads the protagonist down a path of all-out mutiny. I love a reluctant rebel… and this novel has one of the best in literature!

4. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is the queen of dystopia and she explores the genre in many of her novels. In my opinion The Handmaid’s Tale is the best. It’s a feminist’s take of dystopia and she imagines a world where women in the US have dropped to being second-class citizens following an infertility crisis. Women must either live out their lives as wives or if they are fertile they become handmaids – women used like cattle to provide offspring to the affluent families that can afford children. If the handmaid gets pregnant, she may nurse the baby for a short while and then must part with it before she is rented out to the next family. It’s a horrific, mind-boggling concept that stays with you. Even if you’ve watched the series it’s well worth reading the book as the two are very different.

5. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

Robert Harris cut his teeth on historical fiction and when I first picked this book up, I thought I was reading a story set in the Middle Ages. The opening scene features a priest who is riding on horseback to a rural village to conduct the funeral of its deceased priest. The scene setting is masterful but the main character is quite bland and nothing seems particularly out of the ordinary… until the priest arrives at the village and discovers an iPhone. Basically, the entire story reads like historical fiction but is intermittently dispersed with surviving items from a long-dead era… an era which it is now forbidden to talk about.