Nothing tops a warm cup of tea and a little dystopia before bed (and no, we don't mean the nightly news). It can be weirdly soothing to read about another world's hot mess to either help contextualize or see loopholes in our own. Dystopian novels remind us of what's at stake. There are many dystopian novels, especially in the realm of YA (think big blockbuster movie adaptations like Hunger Games or Divergent). If you're looking for some good reads aimed at mature audiences, here are five to read in 2025. Whether you're in the mood for slow burning, high-stakes survival, or tech dystopian novels, these reads will leave you feeling unsettled in the best way possible. Below that, we've included a list of dystopian classics that everyone should read at some point in their lives.
Touching on the dual points of technology's implications for society and the endless hunger for entertainment, The Passengers introduces the horrifying scenario of what would happen if self-driving cars were hacked while the world got to watch. In the novel, eight cars containing a television star, a pregnant woman, a disabled veteran, an abused woman fleeing her husband, a suicidal man, and parents of two traveling in two separate vehicles are hacked for the purpose of making the audience decide who lives or dies. The book will shock you, make you think, and force you to hold tight as the plot twist takes you on an unexpected turn.
One of the most anticipated releases of 2024, I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom tells the story of a man who is approached by a young woman who needs him to drive her and her mysterious black box across the country. She offers cash. When he hesitates, she doubles the offer. The only catch? He must leave all trackable devices behind, he can't ask questions, he cannot look inside the box, and he must be willing to leave now. While also witty and adventurous, this dystopian gem touches on underlying feelings of anxiety and dread in modern society.
In what can either be a cathartic or terrifying read in the post-COVID era, Last One at the Party by Bethany Clift brings us to a world where the human race has been wiped out by the Six Days Maximum (6DM) virus. The virus is called that because you have six days before your body completely destroys itself. Amid the burning skyscrapers, skittering rats, and rotting bodies, a lone survivor contemplates all of the decisions she's made in her career, relationships, and life as she focuses on survival. While dystopian at its core, Last One at the Party also has themes of self-discovery and optimism.
In this dystopian novel, characters are hunting and growing food in Central Park, making encampments on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History, and doing what they can to preserve memories of the past while adapting to a new way of living. In the years after the great glacier melt, only small pockets of people remain in New York City. When a storm breaches the city's flood walls, a young girl with a gift for understanding water races against the swollen Hudson River to escape with her family.
While The Fertile Ones draws obvious comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale and Station Eleven at first glance, this compelling dystopian novel stands on its own two legs with a poignant plot and rich characters. In the year 2067, fertility is a rare and valuable commodity. As a result, a woman's body is property of the government. Each woman is screened for fertility under the Fertility Act. When Ara Murphy is declared fertile, she questions her allegiances and duties as rage builds inside her with every invasive testing procedure she is forced to undergo.
It's never too late to catch up on timeless classics. Whether you read these dystopian books back in your school days or you've seen their film and TV adaptations, we highly recommend (re-)experiencing the originals. Here are the top 12 dystopian books of all time (in our humble opinion).
| 1. 1984 by George Orwell (1949) | Orwell's novel explores totalitarian surveillance, thought control, and reality manipulation, and reads like a blueprint for modern digital authoritarianism. Protagonist Winston Smith's psychological transformation from rebellion to complete surrender creates a devastating portrait of how totalitarian systems break individual resistance. |
| 2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932) | Huxley's vision of a pleasure-obsessed society, called “The World State,” maintains order via genetic engineering, psychological conditioning, and the happiness drug "soma," creating citizens who willingly embrace their subjugation. |
| 3. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953) | Bradbury takes us to a future version of America where books have been outlawed. When a fireman and designated book destroyer named Guy Montag begins questioning authority and reading books in secret, questions of censorship, conformity, critical thinking, and the cruel power of the state all come into focus. |
| 4. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985) | Atwood's “Republic of Gilead” presents a theocratic dystopia where women's reproductive capacity becomes the foundation of a rigid social hierarchy. The handmaid system, environmental catastrophe, and religious extremism combine to create a society that feels both fantastical and terrifyingly plausible. Protagonist Offred's first-person narration provides intimate access to how individuals adapt to and resist systematic dehumanization. |
| 5. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924) | Zamyatin's novel, one of the first major modern dystopias, established many conventions that later influenced Orwell and other writers. The “One State's” mathematical approach to human control, where citizens are known by numbers rather than names, creates a coldly logical form of oppression that strips away individual identity through bureaucratic precision. The novel is told through diary entries, capturing protagonist D-503's psychological breakdown as he discovers emotions and creativity that the One State has tried to eliminate. |
| 6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006) | McCarthy's post-apocalyptic survival novel depicts a father and son surviving a brutal version of America stripped of civilization. The unnamed catastrophe that destroyed the environment becomes less important than the human relationships that persist even in humanity's darkest hour. |
| 7. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962) | Set in dystopian Britain in the “near future” (for 1962), Burgess’s novel explores free will versus behavioral conditioning, raising fundamental questions about the nature of morality and choice. In its exploration of violence as both grotesque and seductive, the novel is controversial and complex. A Clockwork Orange shows how authoritarian systems can corrupt even beauty and art. |
| 8. The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993) | Lowry's young adult dystopian novel presents a seemingly perfect society that has eliminated pain, conflict, and strong emotions through careful social engineering and a daily pill administered at the onset of puberty. The only person who feels the full range of the human experience is The Giver, a crucial role in the community that protagonist Jona must decide whether or not to accept. Though billed as young adult, the novel is timeless and noteworthy for any age reader. |
| 9. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) | Ishiguro's quietly devastating Never Let Me Go follows the lives of three young clones who are raised at a boarding school for the sole purpose of being organ donors. Through the perspective of Kathy H., a “donor” reflecting on her life and upbringing at Hailsham boarding school, Ishiguro crafts a dystopia defined by passivity, emotional repression, and systemic exploitation masked as care. The novel's impact lies in its subtlety—there is no uprising or dramatic collapse, only an aching awareness of lost potential and the quiet machinery of institutionalized dehumanization. Ishiguro's restrained prose allows the ethical horror to unfold gradually, leaving readers with haunting questions about free will, societal complicity, and the price of medical progress. |
| 10. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014) | Mandel’s post-apocalyptic survival tale brings us through the eerie days of civilization's collapse through the lens of a group of people surviving a global flu pandemic called the Georgia Flu in the Great Lakes region. When the world as we know it is destroyed, new ways of living emerge. Sometimes, history repeats itself. The novel focuses on beauty amid devastation, highlighting what survives collapse. |
| 11. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (1971) | Le Guin’s science fiction classic focuses on a man named George Orr who has the power to alter reality through his dreams, and the psychiatrist who attempts to control them for utopian ends. The Lathe of Heaven is a commentary on the difficulty of changing complex systems, humanity's self-destructive qualities, and the fragility of reality itself. |
| 12. The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa (1994) | Ogawa’s dreamlike dystopian novel is set on an island where powerful unknown forces utilize the Memory Police to “disappear” things from the world, forcing people to lose attachments and gradually surrender freedom and autonomy to the state. A cautionary tale of citizens as frogs in a frying pan, finding themselves passively giving up the things they hold dear. |
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