Don't Miss Lists and Other Reading Resources

Nineteen Eighty-Four Read-Alikes

Fiction titles that deal with issues similar in scope to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, a harrowing cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare and his struggle to free himself from an all-encompassing, malevolent state.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Presents Burgess' satire of the present inhumanity of man to man through a futuristic culture where teenagers rule with violence.

Anthem by Ayn Rand.

In a future where there is no love, no science, and everyone is equal and of one entity, one man defies the group to be his own person. That is a serious offense.

Blindness:  A Novel by José Saramago.

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" whose victims are confined to a vacant mental hospital, while a single eyewitness to the nightmare guides seven oddly assorted strangers through the barren urban landscape.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Huxley's classic prophetic novel describes the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia devoid of individual freedom.

Catch 22:  A Novel by Joseph Heller.

Captain Yossarian and other pilots on a small Mediterranean island in World War II face inconsistencies in military rules.

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler.

An aging revolutionary is imprisoned by his own political party and forced to confess to crimes he never committed. Where once he saw promise for humanity, he now sees only darkness.

Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson.

A government redistributes its citizens into regions according to personality type, partitioning the country with barricades and razor wire, until a boy, taken from his family embarks on a mission that will change his life forever.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Captures the strange world of twenty-first-century Earth, a devastated planet in which sophisticated androids, banned from the planet, fight back against their potential destroyers.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit.

The Giver by Lois Lowry.

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Offred, a Handmaid, describes life in what was once the United States, now the Republic of Gilead, a shockingly repressive and intolerant monotheocracy, in a satirical tour de force set in the near future.

The Iron Heel by Jack London
A mixture of science fiction, romance, adventure and social polemic. A social revolution is brutally crushed by The Oligarchy, a vicious state machine that destroys and enslaves resistance to market forces.

Oryx and Crake: A Novel by Margaret Atwood.

A novel of the future explores a world that has been devastated by ecological and scientific disasters.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.

In 2025 California, an eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate savages.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli.
Classic, Renaissance-era guide to acquiring and maintaining political power. Today, nearly 500 years after it was written, this calculating prescription for autocratic rule continues to be much read and studied.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

A fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and smoking too much), who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, "The Florence of the Elbe," a long time ago, and survived to tell the tale. This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace.

V by Thomas Pynchon.

A search for a mysterious woman leads from New York to Cairo to Alexandria to Malta.

Visa for Avalon: A Novel by Bryher.
In this chilling futuristic novel, four men and women attempt an escape to legendary Avalon after "the Movement" threatens the liberty and comforts they have taken for granted.

Walden Two by B.F. Skinner.

A Utopian community organized around behaviorist principles offers provocative alternatives to a society lacking direction.

We by Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin.
Futuristic novel that explores the erosion of the value of the individual.