One of my favorite genres to read is dystopian novels. And with some solid classics, this is a subgenre worth visiting. Keep reading to see the 8 dystopian novels that everyone should read!
The dystopian genre is now geared towards younger readers but that wasn’t always the case. The subgenre gained popularity after World War II as people feared what the future would look like. Nuclear weapons made people imagine a ruined world and the worst possible outcome.
The novel that flipped the subgenre upside down was Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Suddenly, the targeted audience for the dystopian novel was YA readers and it was a bestseller. And years later, that trend continued with popular novels like The Hunger Games and Divergent making this one of the most popular subgenres of the late 2000’s.
Our list is all over the place as we decided to pick some of our favorites. We decided to not choose some of the obvious picks since many people are acquainted with those novels. You can see the full list below!
8 Dystopian Novels That Everyone Should Read
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- Divergent by Veronica Roth
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- The Girl with All the Gifts by Mike Carey
- The Children of Men by P. D. James
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mendel’s novel Station Eleven is one of the best dystopian novels ever written. It is about a band of actors and musicians who travel around the Great Lake region in a post-apocalyptic word. But the band runs into trouble when they encounter a self-proclaimed ‘Prophet’ who uses violence to get whatever he desires.
The Giver
The novel that changed the core audience of dystopian novel is The Giver. It is about a society that has no memory of the past except for a few people known as the Receiver of Memory. The citizens don’t have freedom or choice which is determined by the elders to prevent any negative consequences such as war or poverty.
The Girl with All the Gifts
A dystopian novel that I loved a lot more than I thought I would is The Girl with All the Gifts. It takes place in a world where most of humanity is wiped out and society has broken down. Zombies are almost everywhere and but a military base houses zombie children that can think and feel. But when the military base is overrun with zombies, Melissa, a child zombie escapes with a group of humans and they try to survive in the zombie-infested world.
Conclusion
These are the 8 dystopian novels that everyone should read. They include classics as well as newer novels. We wanted to avoid some of the more common names and hope you found new dystopian novels to read. How many of these books have you read? Let us know in the comments below!
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