2021, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction); the critically acclaimed Bitter Orange (longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award); Swimming Lessons (shortlisted for the Encore Prize for second novels, and Livre de Poche Prize in France); and Our Endless Numbered Days (winner of the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction). They have been translated into more than twenty languages.
At Lit Hub Fuller says there are surprisingly few "dystopian mysteries or mysterious dystopian novels," and she tagged seven of her favorites. One title on the list:
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and CrakeRead about the other entries on the list.
Atwood drip-feeds the reader small amounts of information throughout this dystopian novel, until about two thirds of the way throughwe learn something that keeps us in suspense until nearly the very end. Snowman finds himself on the shores of a land where most humans have been wiped out by a man-made pandemic. He remembers his friend Crake, as well as Oryx, the sex-trafficked woman he fell in love with, but no one is really who they seem.
It’s complex and convoluted and an interesting allegory for how our world could end up.
Oryx and Crake is among Lincoln Michel's ten strangest sci-fi dystopias, Kerstin Hall's five books featuring terrible monsters that tug on our human heartstrings, Ezekiel Boone's top five classic novels about when technology betrays us, Jeff Somers's six books in which the internet helps destroy the world, Chuck Wendig's five books that prove mankind shouldn’t play with technology, S.J. Watson's six best books, James Dawson’s list of ten ways in which writers have established barriers to love just for the sake of a great story, Torie Bosch's top twelve great pandemic novels, Annalee Newitz's top ten works of fiction that might change the way you look at nature and Liz Jensen's top ten environmental disaster stories.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
