22 of the best dystopian novels of all time

Josephine Thomas has heard every possible theory about her mother’s disappearance, but the most worrying is that she is a witch, because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behaviour raises suspicions and a woman – especially a Black woman – can find herself on trial for witchcraft.

But fourteen years have passed since her mother’s disappearance, and now Jo is finally ready to let go. Yet her future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of thirty – or enrol in a registry that allows them to be monitored. At twenty-eight, Jo is ambivalent about marriage. With her ability to control her life on the line, she feels as if she has her never understood her mother more, so when she’s offered the opportunity to honour one last request from her mother’s will, Jo grasps it with both hands.

This powerful work of dystopian speculative fiction explores the limits women face – and the powers they have to transgress and transcend them.

As apocalyptic floods submerge London, a woman gives birth to her first child. Soon the family are forced to flee in search of safety, moving from place to place on a journey of fear and wonder, as the baby grows and thrives against the odds. Megan Hunter's beautiful, spare prose paints an imagined future which is terrifying in its realism. 

One of our favourite dystopian novels of recent years, Station Eleven moves backwards and forwards in time, presenting the recognisable years just before a flu epidemic brought about the collapse of civilisation alongside the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after. It’s a novel that asks questions about art and fame and about the relationships that sustain us through anything – even the end of the world.

To Paradise is in three symphonic sections: one set in 1890s New York, one in 1990s Manhattan, and one in the distinctly dystopian 2090s. 

This future world is governed both by plagues and totalitarian rule. The daughter of an influential scientist is trying to figure out how to live without him, whilst also trying to solve the riddle of her husband's tendency to vanish. These three parts make an enthralling whole: an examination of how different Americas coexist, with the rich and poor, the powerful and weak, the healthy and sick all linked by the desire to protect those they love from harm.

Combining Caribbean magic with bleak urban squalor, Brown Girl in the Ring is set in a decayed and dangerous future Toronto, where Ti-Jeanne must navigate the city streets with her new baby. The privileged have fled, leaving the citizens to barter, farm and discover lost herbal lore. Meanwhile, the rich need a fresh harvest of bodies, and nobody is safe. This award-winning 1998 fantasy was Nalo Hopkinson's first novel.

Don DeLillo's The Silence is a unique dystopian novel which, rather than delving into how humanity may struggle to survive in the aftermath of a disaster, focuses on the immediate moment an unpredictable crisis hits. Although it was begun before COVID-19 existed, it’s set at a time when a virus that emptied the streets is ‘fresh in the memory’ and an even greater disaster is about to strike. This is a dazzling short novel about what it means to be human in a time of crisis. 

It’s 2074 and America is once again devastated by civil war. Sarat has lost her father, her home, and is fighting for survival. She didn’t start this war, but she’s determined she’ll end it. This powerful debut novel imagines America in the grip of a deadly plague and riven by civil war as one family are caught in the middle. This dystopian book asks us to consider what might happen if America turned it’s most deadly policies and weapons on itself. 

Set in Britain in the near future, a right-wing government believes the answer to society's ills is the Sanctity of Marriage Act, where marriage is the expectation and single citizens are shunned. To ensure compliance, the government keeps a watchful eye and uses every tool in its arsenal to ensure everyone will love, honour and obey . . . But four couples are about to discover just how difficult relationships can be when someone else is watching. From the author of The One, now an eight-part Netflix series, John Marrs' The Marriage Act is a dystopian thriller packed full of twists.

Kafka creates a nightmarish bureaucracy which traps his protagonist in an unlawful conviction in this bleak and frightening dystopian fiction. On his thirtieth birthday Joseph K is arrested for an unknown crime. He has no idea what he has done wrong, and he is never told what he has been charged with. As he fights to prove his innocence he struggles with the invisible Law and the untouchable Court, and the course of his life is changed forever. 

Heavily influenced by the science fiction writers, such as H.G. Wells, who went before him, Aldous Huxley presents a future where the World Controllers have created the ideal society in this classic dystopian book. All its members are happy consumers, kept docile with a sinister mix of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs.

In the award-winning Noughts and Crosses sequence, Malorie Blackman creates a dystopian world in which the white Noughts are treated as an inferior race, while the black Crosses are born into privilege and perceived as superior in every sense. It follows Sephy and Callum, who, despite the friendship they have shared since they were children, are fated to be bitter enemies. Sephy is a Cross, dark-skinned, beautiful and the daughter of a powerful politician, while Callum is a Nought, white and poor, existing to serve Crosses and nothing more. But against all odds, star-crossed lovers Sephy and Callum choose each other. 

In this classic of feminist dystopian fiction, Margaret Atwood presents a world where women’s bodies are controlled by the state and 'handmaids' are forced to provide the families of the elite with children. The bestselling TV adaptation, starring Elisabeth Moss and Samira Wiley, has been nominated for multiple awards, and the fourth series is highly anticipated.

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A post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son trying to survive by any means possible, Cormac McCarthy’s classic dystopian novel The Road is one of the most shocking, harrowing and bleak visions of the future ever created. The book was adapted into a BAFTA-nominated film starring Viggo Mortensen in 2009.

Possibly the most terrifying dystopian scenario for booklovers, Fahrenheit 451 is set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned and intellectual thought is illegal. Guy Montag’s job as a fireman means he is responsible for burning any books that are found, because they're considered the source of all discord and unhappiness. But everything changes when Guy's doubts start to grow.

Naomi Wood's astounding dystopian novel is set in an alternative England where the Church controls the country and non-believers are exiled to a remote island. On the island a gang of boys patrols the community, punishing anyone showing signs of faith. When a girl arrives from the mainland looking for her long-lost mother, the gang is torn apart, with violent consequences. 

One of the first portrayals of time-travel in literature, The Time Machine is a dystopian novel about a Victorian scientist who travels to the year 802,701 AD to find that humanity has descended into two distinct races, the charming but child-like Eloi and the sinister and dangerous Morlocks. 

One of the best known dystopian novels of all time, 1984 is George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian future in which everything and everyone is slave to a tyrannical regime lead by The Party. The novel has a fascinating history, from the phenomenon the book became on publication to the impact it has had on the English language. Dorian Lynskey explores the cultural history of 1984 in his remarkable book The Ministry of Truth.

 Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead was inspired to write this apocalyptic sci-fi novel because of his teenage fascination with the work of Stephen King and Issac Asimov. A plague has ravaged the planet, and the population is divided into the living and the living dead. Mark Spitz is working on a task force to clear the infested from ‘Zone One’, but things quickly go from bad to worse . . . 

One day, young girls across the world wake up to discover they have ‘the power’ – an electrical charge they are able to inflict at their will. Able to ‘wake up’ this power in older women, suddenly the balance of world power has shifted and men are no longer in charge. A new world order quickly falls into place, but will things get any better? This is the feminist dystopian novel that Margaret Atwood called 'electrifying' and 'shocking'. 

The Committee enforces its despotic rule on a nightmarish Earth from the safety of the Argus Space Station. Too many people fighting for too few resources means corruption is rife, people are starving and the poor are policed by mechanized overseers and identity-reader guns. But the Committee still need twelve billion to die before stability can be returned, and they are prepared to take the carnage to a whole new level to reach their goal. 

The Departure is the first book in Neal Asher's near-future set Owner dystopian science fiction series. Discover the other books in Neal Asher's Owner series here.

This bestselling dystopian fiction young adult trilogy was adapted into the smash hit film series which catapulted Jennifer Lawrence to stardom. Set in a dark vision of the near future, twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to take part in a brutal reality TV show where the only rule is kill or be killed. 

A prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, set sixty-four years before the events of the first book in the trilogy, was published in May 2020.

No list of the best sci-fi books is complete without Octavia Butler’s science fiction classic Parable of the Sower. Set in a dystopian Los Angeles in a crumbling America, Lauren Olamina struggles to survive in a world destroyed by drugs, disease and war as she battles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.