Fahrenheit 451
Sixty years after its originally publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future where freedom of thought is under attack and books are burned instead of read. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.
More info →Brave New World
Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls.
More info →Animal Farm
George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is an intimate part of our contemporary culture, quoted so often that we tend to forget who wrote the original words. It is an account of the bold struggle that transforms Mr. Jones' Manor Farm into Animal Farm, a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal.
More info →The Handmaid’s Tale
The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.
More info →The Giver
The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.
More info →Anthem
Anthem is Ayn Rand’s classic tale of a dystopian future of the great “We”—a world that deprives individuals of a name or independence—that anticipates her later masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
More info →Lord of the Flies
A plane crashes on a desert island. The only survivors are a group of schoolboys. By day, they discover fantastic wildlife and dazzling beaches, learning to survive; at night, they are haunted by nightmares of a primitive beast. Orphaned by society, it isn't long before their innocent childhood games devolve into a savage, murderous hunt ...
More info →Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and "retire" them.
More info →Slaughterhouse-Five
Slaughterhouse-Five is the now famous parable of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran and POW who has, in the later stage of his life, become "unstuck in time" and who experiences at will (or unwillingly) all known events of his chronology out of order and sometimes simultaneously.
More info →About George Orwell’s book, 1984
1984, a futuristic book written in 1949, has been made famous for its ability to prophesize and forewarn the possible future of totalitarian societies. Categorically, it is a book about the loss of freedoms.
Many more books have been written in this same vein. They are written from a variety of socio-political viewpoints, the most discussed being Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury. Yet all have their place in the minds of the modern reader.
Many of the books like 1984 have been banned by censorship (a practice many of these books warn against). Yet this fact has not stopped the lingering popularity of these books now some sixty years later, nor has it quieted the recommendation of these books from reader to reader.
Books like 1984 are often part of a high school curriculum. If you are curious about the larger themes and socio-political dialogues surrounding Orwell and Huxley, you may enjoy this video from Academy of Ideas.