Dystopian Literary Fiction

Qualityland, Marc-Uwe Kling's first book to be translated into English, is a brilliantly clever, illuminating satire in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and George Orwell that offers a visionary, frightening, and all-too funny glimpse at a near future we may be hurtling toward faster than it's at all comfortable to admit. So why delay any longer? TheShop already knows you're going to love this book. You may as well head to the cash register, crack the covers, and see why that is for yourself.

This is the story Harry Ransom. If you know his name it's most likely as the inventor of the Ransom Process, a stroke of genius that changed the world. Or you may have read about how he lost the battle of Jasper City, or won it, depending on where you stand in matters of politics. Friends called him Hal or Harry, or by one of a half-dozen aliases, of which he had more than any honest man should. He often went by Professor Harry Ransom, and though he never had anything you might call a formal education, he definitely earned it.

A recklessly idealistic girl dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled (future) world and is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America - “Wainscotia, Wisconsin” - that existed 80 years before. Cast adrift in time in this idyllic Midwestern town, she is set upon a course of “rehabilitation” - but cannot resist falling in love with a fellow exile and questioning the constrains of the Wainscotia world with results that are both devastating and liberating.

The end of the world didn't happen overnight. After years of war, societal breakdown, freak storms, and rising tides, humanity already hovered near the edge. Then came the most unexpected threat of all: the world's corpses rising up to deliver the final blow.

One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep - and doesn't wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town.

As America collapses in the chaos of war, pollution, and bankruptcy, two sisters pool their resources to survive alone in the hills above San Francisco. Although dwindling food and increasing isolation threaten them, they soon find a more immediate danger standing at their door. When a young man arrives, his friendship offers tantalizing fulfillment, but his love threatens to divide the sisters.

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 15 años después de que Defred se adentrara en lo desconocido, con los testimonios asombrosos de tres narradoras del mundo de Gilead.

When spring comes, the people leave their winter cave, foraging for honey and shoots, bulbs and grubs, the hot richness of a deer's brain. They awaken the fire to heat their naked bodies, lay down their thorn bushes and share pictures in their minds. But strange things are happening - inexplicable scents, sounds and violence - and, suddenly, unimaginable creatures are half-glimpsed in the forest: an upright new people of bone-faces and deerskins. What the early people don't know is that their season is already over....

This novel centers on the "It's me" telephone scam - often targeting the elderly - that has escalated in Japan in recent years. Typically, the caller identifies himself only by saying, "Hey, it's me", and goes on to claim in great distress that he's been in an accident or lost some money with which he was entrusted at work, etc., and needs funds wired to his account right away. ME's narrator is a nondescript young Tokyoite named Hitoshi Nagano.

In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world - her music, her purpose - is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: She performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.

The penalty for Dani Cumali's murder: $84,000. Theo works in the Criminal Audit Office. He assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full. These days, there's no need to go to prison—provided that you can afford to pay the penalty for the crime you've committed. If you're rich enough, you can get away with murder. But Dani's murder is different. When Theo finds her lifeless body, and a hired killer standing over her and calmly calling the police to confess, he can't let her death become just an entry on a balance sheet.

When a wealthy client visits Mathilde’s dressmaking shop, she finds herself drawn into the only surviving circle of luxury left in a barren London. Attending parties offers a welcome escape from life governed by ration cards and a strictly enforced child policy. Here she meets enigmatic government minister George and piano-playing Jaminder, with whom an intense friendship blossoms. As their relationship grows stronger, George’s grip on Mathilde tightens....

Years ago, just before the country was incinerated to wasteland, 10 men and their families colonized an island off the coast. They built a radical society of ancestor worship, controlled breeding, and the strict rationing of knowledge and history. Only the Wanderers - chosen male descendants of the original 10 - are allowed to cross to the wastelands, where they scavenge for detritus among the still-smoldering fires.

Lyra's story begins in the Haven Institute, a building tucked away on a private island off the coast of Florida that from a distance looks serene and even beautiful. But up close, the locked doors, military guards, and biohazard suits tell a different story. In truth Haven is a clandestine research facility where thousands of replicas, or human models, are born, raised, and observed. When a surprise attack is launched on Haven, two of its young experimental subjects - Lyra, or 24, and the boy known only as 72 - manage to escape.

Emi Vargas, whose parents helped save the world, is tired of being told how lucky she is to have been born after the climate crisis. But following the public assassination of a dozen climate criminals, Emi’s mother, Kristina, disappears as a possible suspect, and Emi’s illusions of utopia are shattered. A determined Emi and her father, Larch, journey from their home in Nuuk, Greenland to New York City, now a lightly populated storm-surge outpost built from the ruins of the former metropolis. But they aren’t the only ones looking for Kristina.

Nico Storm and his father, Willem, drive a truck filled with essential supplies through a desolate land. They are among the few in the world, as far as they know, to have survived a devastating virus that has swept over the planet. Their lives turned upside down, Nico realizes that his superb marksmanship and cool head mean he is destined to be his father's protector, even though he is still only a boy.

Having just escaped from the treacherous island that was once Manhattan, Brooke, Ben, Logan, Bree, and Rose make their way up the Hudson river in their stolen boat, low on fuel, low on food, and desperately needing shelter from the cold. On their tails are the slaverunners, who will stop at nothing until they capture them and bring them back. As they make their way upriver in this post-apocalyptic, action-packed thriller, on their way to try to find the mythical city in Canada, they will need to use all their ingenuity and survival skills to stay alive.

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.

Lucien moves to Los Angeles to be with his grandmother as she undergoes an experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s using the new drug, Memoroxin. An emerging photographer, he’s also running from the sudden death of his mother, a well-known artist whose legacy haunts him. Sophie has just landed the lead in the upcoming performance of La Sylphide with the Los Angeles Ballet Company. She still waitresses at the Chateau Marmont during her off-hours, witnessing the recreational use of Memoroxin - or Mem - among the Hollywood elite.

With these 13 transfixing, ingenious stories, Ben Marcus gives us timely dystopian visions of alienation in a modern world - cosmically and comically apt. Never has existential catastrophe been so much fun.