One of the most attractive literary genres is the dystopian one, this attraction is mainly due to the social scenarios it presents, and the original stories that are developed through the pen of the authors of dystopian novels.
Writers of this genre immerse the audience in a generally futuristic world, in which some factor has generated the dehumanization of society, thus provoking a world contrary to what is expected of a utopia.
There are several exponents of dystopian stories, whose creations have marked a milestone in the world of literature and universal culture, presenting narratives that many have cataloged as prophecies.
The most creative and expressive minds have captured their thoughts and ideas in books that today are considered literary masterpieces, and that every good reader should enjoy.
We are very pleased to present to you our selected list of the best 15 dystopian novel authors of all time so that you can get to know their works and enjoy an excellent reading.
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Classic Dystopian Novel Authors
The books classified or denoted as classics are those developed in such a way that they have become part of the literary treasure of humanity, in this case, thanks to the authors of classic dystopian novels.
Some of the writers responsible for these texts took their experiences as a basis for creating their stories and captured them in a captivating and sobering way that changed the vision of many people in the world.
The possible reality combined with fiction on each page is what has allowed these writers to be recognized as the best classic dystopian novel authors, which we present in this section.
1) George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an Indian-born British novelist, journalist, essayist, and critic, known worldwide for his dystopian novels.
His work bears the mark of the experiences lived by the author and his position against British imperialism, in favor of democratic socialism, and against Nazi and Stalinist totalitarianism after he participated in the Spanish Civil War.
He is one of the most prominent English-language essayists of the 1930s and 1940s. In 2008 he was ranked number two in The Times’ list of the fifty most important British writers since 1945.
Here we present 2 outstanding work by George Orwell:
Nineteen Eighty-Four
The story in this book is one of those stories that are said today “any resemblance to reality is a mere coincidence”. When its author George Orwell wrote it, he did not think that someday something similar could be lived.
The book 1984 narrates a situation in the city of London where the Thought Police are in charge of controlling the citizens’ life in a suffocating way. To do so, they manipulate information, and this is when the protagonist Winston Smith comes in.
Winston’s job is to rewrite history and adapt it to what the government considers the official version of the facts, so after a while of being an accomplice of the lies, he decides to revolt against the power that subdues and governs them.
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is a satirical short novel by the British writer. Published in 1945, the work is a scathing fable about how the Soviet regime of Lósif Stalin corrupts socialism.
In the novel’s fiction, a group of farm animals drive out the tyrannical humans and create a system of government of their own that ends up becoming another brutal tyranny. The author, a democratic socialist and for many years a member of the Independent Labor Party, was a critic of Stalin. The novel was written during World War II and, although published in 1945, did not become known to the public until the late 1950s.
In addition, the work is an analysis of the corruption that can follow any acquisition of power, at any level.
2) Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, teacher, and political activist. Atwood has written novels of various genres, essays, short stories, and books of poems.
As a literary critic she is best known for her Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), described as the most astonishing book ever written on Canadian literature and which succeeded in increasing interest in Canadian literature.
Atwood continues to write, with great success for critics and her readers. Her books are studied in schools, colleges, and universities around the world.
Here we present an outstanding work by Margaret Atwood:
The Handmaids Tale
The author’s insight describes Defred, a woman belonging to a society taken over by theocratic politicians, whose power suppresses freedom of the press and women’s rights.
The Handmaid’s Tale is a tragic story that conveys the reality lived by this woman, in which her only utility before a despotic society was to procreate compulsorily, and in case of opposition or unwilling compliance, her punishment would be to be publicly executed or banished to a polluted area, and later to die from toxic waste.
The ruling regime is utterly tyrannical, a meticulous controller of women’s lives, founded on the apparent mandate of an “all-powerful god”. This play contemplates the risks of mixing religion and politics, the determination to subject women to the desires of society, and the unstoppable force of desire as an offending element.
Oryx and Crake
Can you imagine being one of the few survivors on the face of the earth after a natural disaster? It would be a desperate situation in its entirety, but that is the scenario presented to us by acclaimed author Margaret Atwood.
Oryx and Crake chronicles the love affairs of two people in a post-apocalyptic world, which has been devastated and left them in the company of the dreaded loneliness.
However, the sad situation becomes fortuitous when they have no choice but to embark on a love-filled journey toward survival, a journey from which they cannot turn back.
3) Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley was a British writer and philosopher who emigrated to the United States. A member of a family of intellectuals, he is best known for his novels and essays, but he also published short stories, poetry, travel books, and screenplays.
Through his novels and essays, he was a critic of social roles, conventions, norms, and ideals. He was also interested in spiritual subjects, such as parapsychology and mysticism, about which he wrote several books.
He is considered one of the most important representatives of modern thought.
Here we present an outstanding work by Aldous Huxley, if you want to read and download other works by Aldous Huxley in PDF format we invite you to visit our collection of Aldous Huxley books.
Brave New World
Respect for nature and the origin of creation have been suppressed, the values of humanity are sacrificed and procreation is supplanted by in vitro fertilization, resulting in anatomy based on a mold designed at the whim of an assembly line.
Brave New World externalizes a metaphorical universe towards the future, in which the most atrocious predictions concerning the human race dominated by capitalism have finally materialized, with consumerism and comfort in a society emerging victorious.
The work presents a distortion of reality as a preview of the future, a dystopia that precedes the scientific evolution of reproduction, where the human being has no value; religion, love, family, and respect are eliminated, while emotions and feelings are managed by the gods of this orb.
4) Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is best known for his work Martian Chronicles and the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451.
Bradbury considered himself “a storyteller for moral purposes”. His works often produce in the reader a metaphysical and, therefore, disconcerting anguish, but always with a costumbrist touch of everyday life.
A poetic halo and a certain romanticism are other persistent traits in his works. Due to its peculiar characteristics and themes, his work can be considered an exponent of epic realism, although he has never defined it in this way.
Here we present an outstanding work by Ray Bradbury:
Farenheit 451
Ray’s books are loved by those who follow this genre. His book Fahrenheit 451 is also one of them, it deals with a human conformism that does not mind to some extent that their rights are oppressed, as long as they have access to the basic things for their daily sustenance.
The typical game of the oppressor and the oppressed see action in this magnificent work, where reading books is forbidden since they generate discord, separation, and suffering. This role is played by firemen, specifically Guy Montag who plays the role of a bloodhound to capture those who clandestinely continue reading books.
It describes the story of a terrible future, gloomy and full of oppression, where Montag instead of extinguishing fires causes them, thus justifying his job as a cruel book burner.
5) Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamiatin was a Russian writer who, thanks to the work A Provincial Tale written in 1913, in which he satirized the life of a small Russian village, gained a certain degree of recognition.
He published his masterpiece, the novel We (1921), which earned him a publication ban in his country and was banned in the USSR until 1988. It was the first novel to initiate the dystopian genre.
We influenced Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. They declared their admiration for Zamiatin’s work. All three are considered fathers of the genre of dystopia or anti-utopia.
Here we present an outstanding work by Yevgeny Zamyatin:
We
We is a dystopian novel set in a future society where surveillance and repression by the state are total. It is one of the first works of the dystopian subgenre and inspired, among other novels, George Orwell’s 1984.
We arose from the author’s experiences in Russia before and after the Russian Revolution of 1917. He had been imprisoned first by the Tsarist regime in 1906 and then by the Bolsheviks in 1922.
He also recounts the experiences of his work as a naval engineer in Newcastle, in the shipyards on the River Tyne, during the First World War. The novel is clearly critical of the Soviet regime, and may also refer to Mussolini’s fascism.
6) Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson was a British writer and composer, who produced a prolific literary and musical oeuvre, being generally known for the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, which was made famous by Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film.
He published more than fifty books covering a wide variety of subjects. He is the author of an enormous amount of literary criticism, essays, newspaper articles, and a score of cruel and caustic novels.
His capacity for languages (he spoke more than 10) is reflected in the invention of Ulam, a fictitious prehistoric language, for the film In Search of Fire (1981).
Here we present an outstanding work by Anthony Burgess:
A Clockwork Orange
For the author of this book, the human being goes beyond being a shell with life, he requires unique values and skills, which he highlights in this book called: A Clockwork Orange.
In it, he takes us to a world of much violence, where destruction stands as a pillar and life is overshadowed because of it, but there is a young teenager named Alex who seems to be different from the rest.
Although Alex lives in a similar way to others, deep down he loves language, loves beauty, loves nature, qualities that will serve him later to survive in a dystopian and self-destructive world.
7) José Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago was a Portuguese writer. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, for his ability to “render an elusive reality comprehensible, with parables sustained by imagination, compassion, and irony”.
His first great novel was Levantado do chão (1980), about the workers of Lavre, in the province of Alentejo. With this book, Saramago manages to find his voice, that unmistakable, limpid, and an almost poetic style that distinguishes him.
In the following years, Saramago published almost without rest. The author wrote until the end of his life, it is even said that he had thirty pages of the next novel.
Here we present an outstanding work by José Saramago:
Blindness
Blindness is a fictional novel that alerts us to “the responsibility of having eyes when others lose them.” “Inside us, there is something that has no name, that thing is what we are.”
A man standing at a red light suddenly goes blind. It is the first case of “white blindness” that spreads in a fulminating manner. Confined in quarantine or lost in the city, the blind will have to face what is most primitive in human nature: the will to survive at any cost.
At a point where literature and wisdom intersect, José Saramago forces us to stop, close our eyes and see. Recovering lucidity and rescuing affection are two fundamental proposals of a novel that is also a reflection on the ethics of love and solidarity.
8) William Golding
William Gerald Golding was a British novelist and poet, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983, known especially for his work Lord of the Flies.
In his best-known novels, he cultivates a style of allegorical fiction in which he frequently alludes to classical literature, mythology, and Christian symbolism.
His works do not follow a single plot line and the composition technique varies, but in all of them, he emphasizes the violence inherent in human beings and the sensible and civic response to barbarism and war, showing the ambiguities of civilization.
Here we present an outstanding work by William Golding:
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a rather witty title that at first glance leads us to think unusual things, however, it is just a striking title by the author, who would win the Nobel Prize for literature with this fantastic work.
William Golding had a definite purpose with his novel, and that was to demonstrate to the world the reality of the human condition, something he achieved fantastically with his narration of a moral fable in Lord of the Flies.
His literary way of writing calls for reflection, the author makes a man look inside himself and think, am I really like this? so aggressive, so immoral, so criminal? It is interesting to see how this writing, first published in 1954, immediately became an international success, establishing itself as a contemporary classic.
Current Dystopian Novel Authors
The dystopian genre has continued to develop in the hands of current dystopian authors, who have been responsible for creating unique stories that are highly acclaimed by readers.
One of the advantages that these writers have had is that they have been able to cultivate knowledge and experience the evolution of different societies, which has provided them with a broad base of information and inspiration for their books.
After an arduous effort we have managed to create a selection of the best authors of current dystopian novels, for you to enjoy their captivating and interesting stories.
9) Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins is an American writer and screenwriter, and creator of the famous Hunger Games series.
Suzanne started in 1991 as a screenwriter for children’s television shows working for channels such as Nickelodeon. She met children’s book writer James Plumiew who inspired her to write children’s books on her own.
In 2009 and 2010 she published the novels that completed the trilogy: On Fire and Mockingjay. The series has 26 foreign editions.
Here we present an outstanding work by Suzanne Collins:
The Hunger games
The Hunger Games is the No. 1 best-selling book on Amazon in the section of action-adventure young adult novels, where survival is the ultimate goal. Author Suzane Collins has created a series that has achieved unparalleled success, including in the film world.
It is a series that does not need much introduction, the hunger games are widely known, and winning equals fame and wealth, but losing means death.
It deals specifically with a devastated world, where there are only 12 states, which on a certain annual occasion must face each other in survival battles, battles for a couple of a boy and a girl, who must risk everything to win and not die in the attempt.
The protagonist Katniss decides to participate to save her family, without knowing that her participation entails a bigger plan than family salvation.
10) Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro is a British writer of Japanese origin who writes in the English language. He received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is considered among a group of writers who in the 1980s breathed new life into English literature.
He considers Dostoyevsky, Proust, and Charlotte Brontë as his greatest influences. His works are characterized by a psychology of anguish and remembrance of the past.
In 2017, Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy considered his work that “in emotionally powerful novels, he has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection to the world.”
Here we present an outstanding work by Kazuo Ishiguro:
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro shows us a world reduced to a few people, in which a boarding school is the center of everything, and there are the most “special” people in society.
Never Let Me Go takes us to Hailsham, a place where the children of hippies are trained in life. Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy are three people who lived there for a long time, but once they left they discovered the reality of the institute.
Being sterile, orphaned, and lonely can be a joy when living in a society so corrupt and damaged by evil, something they will try to avoid together at all costs.
11) Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel is a Canadian novelist and essayist. She has written numerous essays and six novels, including Station Eleven (2014) and The Glass Hotel (2020).
The Glass Hotel has been translated into 20 languages. His most recent novel, Sea of Tranquility, was published in April 2022 and debuted at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list.
In 2002, Mandel began writing Last Night in Montreal. Mandel was an administrative assistant at the Anderson Cancer Research Center at Rockefeller University. Mandel is a staff writer for the online magazine The Millions.
Here we present an outstanding work by Emily St. John Mandel:
Station Eleven
Station Eleven is a novel by Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel that takes place in the Great Lakes region before and after a fictional swine flu pandemic, known as the “Georgia flu,” has devastated the world, killing most of the population.
The novel tells the story of a Hollywood star, her would-be savior, and a group of nomadic actors who roam the region’s scattered outposts, risking everything for art and humanity.
Moving forward and backward in time from the actor’s early days as a movie star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony tours the wasteland of what’s left. The story posits the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress from the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.
12) Veronica Roth
Veronica Roth is an American author best known for her novel Divergent, and its sequel Insurgent. It won the Goodreads award for Favorite Book of 2011, and Best Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction story in 2012.
Such was the book’s success in 2011, it was recognized in over 15 countries thus affirming a trilogy. In May 2012 he sold the copyright for the film release of the first book to Summit Entertainment.
In addition to Divergent, the short story Hearken was included in the book Shards & Ashes, a compilation featuring original stories of dystopian worlds by nine New York Times bestselling authors, including Roth.
Here we present an outstanding work by Veronica Roth:
Divergent
Divergent has been a success, Veronica Roth’s novel has achieved the dream of many writers, which is to see his work written on the big screen.
The Divergent saga is based on the life of Beatrice Pior, who has within herself the power to save all the others who are like her, but at the same time, that power becomes the object of persecution, pain, and tragedy.
The youth society is divided into five factions and moves the reader to think about where to belong, you can be part of the truth, selflessness, daring, cordiality, and erudition. Which one will you choose?
13) Omar El Akkad
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. The start of his journalism career coincided with the beginning of the war on terrorism, and over the next decade, he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and many other places around the world.
His work earned him the National Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists.
His first novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. He has won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and has been nominated for more than ten other awards.
Here we present an outstanding work by Omar El Akkad:
American War
American War is the first novel by Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El Akkad. It is set in the near future in the United States, ravaged by climate change and disease, where the Second Civil War has broken out over the use of fossil fuels.
The plot is told through historiographical metafiction by future historian Benjamin Chestnut about his aunt, Sarat Chestnut, a climate refugee who is driven out of Louisiana by the war.
The decisions Sarat makes will have tremendous consequences not only for herself, but for her family and her country, and will ripple through generations of strangers and relatives. Narrative chapters are interspersed with fictional primary documents compiled by the narrator.
14) Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King, better known as Stephen King and occasionally by his pen name Richard Bachman, is an American writer of horror novels, supernatural fiction, mystery, science fiction, and fantasy literature.
His books have sold more than 350 million copies, and have mostly been adapted for film and television. He has published 64 novels, eleven collections of short stories and novellas, seven non-fiction books, and a screenplay.
He has won the Bram Stoker Award thirteen times, the British Fantasy Award seven times, the Locus Award five times, the World Fantasy Award four times, the Edgar Award twice, and the Hugo and O. Henry Awards once.
Here we present an outstanding work by Stephen King:
Apocalypse
Apocalypse has become one of the favorite books of the American author’s followers. It is a work of science fiction in which the world changes drastically.
A flu virus, artificially created as a possible bacteriological weapon, spreads throughout the United States and the world, causing the death of most of the population. The survivors have common dreams, in which an old woman and a young man appear.
The old woman urges them to travel to Nebraska to fight Randall Flagg, an abominable character who leads the forces of evil and seeks the ultimate annihilation of humanity through a fearsome nuclear arsenal.
15) Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry is an American writer of children’s literature, best known for her novel The Giver.
She began her career as a freelance photographer and journalist in the 1970s. Her work caught the attention of Houghton Mifflin, which encouraged her to write her first children’s book.
Since 1977 she has written more than 30 books for children and has published an autobiography. Two of her books have won Newbery Awards. She has been a finalist three times for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
Here we present an outstanding work by Lois Lowry:
The Giver
For children, a dystopian society may be the best thing that happens in their lives, especially if there is order in such an established society.
The Giver is a very interesting play, it focuses on the age of 12 as the time for children to receive a gift that will change their lives forever, so as they get older they prepare for that moment.
Jonah is the chosen one, now he must visit the old man who grants him his gift, one that will teach him about freedom, fear, control of information, friendship, feelings, etc.
Here ends our selection of Authors of Dystopian Novel. We hope you liked it and already have your next book!
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