Ten of the most notable New Years in literature

In 2011 at the Guardian, John Mullan tagged the ten most notable New Years in literature. One title on the list:

The Children of Men by PD James

Is this the glummest new year in recent fiction? On New Year's Day, 2021, "the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl". He was 25, a significant age because, in James's dystopian tale, it has been 25 years since a pandemic made all human beings infertile. On the same day Theodore Faron begins his journal of humanity's last days.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Children of Men is on Siobhan Adcock's list of five top books about motherhood and dystopia, M.R. Carey's list of five favorite apocalyptic novels, Jeff Somers's top ten list of books with plausible fictional apocalypses, Justin Cronin's list of ten top world-ending novels, Anita Singh's list of five P.D. James novels you should read, Torie Bosch's top twelve list of great pandemic novels, Joel Cunningham's list of eleven scary fictional diseases, Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders's list of the twelve most unfaithful movie versions of science fiction and fantasy books, Ben H. Winters' list of three books to read before the end of the world, and John Sutherland's list of the five best books about the end of England.

--Marshal Zeringue