A good self-isolation reading list requires several categories. you should read some of the brilliant novels about the pandemic that everyone is talking about, and some novels about being alone. You should also add some comforting reading, poetry, and books about people who are thoughtful, helpful, and kind.
Add your quarantine book list suggestion below in the comments, or find more recommendations here.
You are reading: Best dystopian books 2020
station eleven, by emily st john mandel
once you’ve read season eleven, you won’t be able to stop thinking about it. the 2014 novel jumps back and forth between the early days of a civilization-ending pandemic and the long aftermath, as small groups of survivors try to rebuild. A group of characters form a post-apocalyptic Shakespeare troupe and travel through the Canadian wilderness, performing ancient plays in exchange for food. the real drama of the novel comes not from the blood or the gunfights, but from the protagonists’ constant calculation of how much they have lost. “survival is insufficient,” they keep reminding one another, even when survival itself is far from guaranteed. it all feels terribly plausible.
If you’ve already read Season Eleven, the author has a hotly anticipated new novel this month: The Glass Hotel, about a global ponzi scheme and a disappearing woman.
compensation, by ling ma
Looking for a novel about the pandemic that is also a satire of global capitalism? Separately, the civilization-ending pandemic is Shen fever, which is believed to have originated in Shenzhen, China, the center of electronics manufacturing, and then spread via tiny fungal spores throughout the world. The narrator is Candace Chen, who works at a publishing house in New York City, overseeing the Bible division. Candace is sharp, sardonic, and before the end of the world, a little shy. Somehow, she becomes one of the last people in Manhattan left alive, before fleeing to the desert in a yellow cab from New York City. As Alison Willmore, film critic at Vulture, wrote: “We should all be reading Ling Ma’s split, not only because of the pandemic parallels, but because her heroine’s survival seems to hinge on her resistance to nostalgia.” p>
the great believers, by rebecca makkai
This is a novel about the long-lasting consequences of trauma and loss, set among a group of gay friends in Chicago at the start of the AIDS epidemic. tells two parallel stories, one taking place in 1985, when yale tishman, a young art expert, begins to lose his friends to AIDS, and the second in 2015, when fiona, whose brother died of AIDS in 1985 looking for his missing person. her daughter, and she must face her unresolved grief. this is a gripping, fast-moving novel, a good fit for long days in isolation. I read it alone in a cabin in the woods, forgot myself and couldn’t put it down.
the old drift, by namwali serpell
This multi-generational epic follows the intertwined fortunes of three Zambian families – black, white and brown – over more than a century, from the late 19th century to the near future. It’s a big, dazzling book, and Serpell’s ambition and humor will win you over from the first page. This is not a novel about the pandemic, but the AIDS epidemic shapes the stories of subsequent generations, and the novel as a whole is grappling with other forces that shape our current pandemic: colonialism, technology, the stigma and secrets, the idea of Europe, the idea of Africa.
the power, by councilor naomi
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In this 2016 bestselling novel, women and girls develop the power to inflict pain or death on others, mostly men, with the power that comes from their hands. it is the opposite of a pandemic, but it has a similar capacity to destabilize and remake society. this is not a relaxing novel – women who develop power sometimes develop it in response to horrible violence, including sexual violence, so the novel is a chronicle of the pain and terror inflicted on women around the world , as well as his growing rebellion.
the book of the end of the world, by connie willis
In this 1992 novel by one of America’s most acclaimed science fiction writers, a graduate student who is part of a time travel history research group in Oxford is sent on an expedition to the age of middle and ends in the middle of the black plague. meanwhile, an epidemic is also spreading in mid-21st century england. Have the time-traveling researchers infected their contemporary world?
year of wonders, by geraldine brooks
Looking for a classic and comfortable piece of historical fiction: a relatable female lead faces the plague? Brooks’s 2001 bestselling novel tells the story of a young servant girl trying to survive in a small English town in 1666.
the formation commission, by ingrid burrington and brendan byrne
First published in 2019 as an email series, this speculative fiction novel is one of the sharpest explorations I’ve read into the collision between Silicon Valley, national security, and the rapidly disintegrating business of journalism. . The protagonist is a struggling freelancer whose older brother, a famous investigative journalist, was assassinated on Facebook Live, during a second American Civil War (popularly dubbed “The National Shit Storm”). it is not a pandemic, but his vision of a very plausible near future has many other characteristics that he will recognize. you can read it online.
jane eyre, by charlotte brontë
before the sexy and brooding mr rochester, before you hear anything about someone in an attic, jane eyre survived an epidemic at a girls boarding school. And it is this experience, witnessing the deadly greed, incompetence, and cruelty of the men who run the boarding school and put her and her fellow students at risk, that shapes Jane’s character and outlook. . Jane Eyre is so much bigger, weirder and more compelling than the gothic love story that made her famous. If you’re lucky enough to be quarantined with someone else, read Jane Eyre out loud.
room, by emma donoghue
This novel is narrated by a five-year-old boy, who has grown up with his mother in the single room where she is held captive. to him, that room is the whole world, and everything in it is vividly real to him: the bed, his favorite spoon, the pictures his mother draws for him. the love and inventiveness his mother shows in trying to give him a good life in that room will resonate especially at this time.
real life, by brandon taylor
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loneliness. alienation. distrust. science as actually practised, so different from science as an idea. The themes of Taylor’s elegant college novel, which follows the life of a queer black grad student at a largely white college, resonate in a pandemic, though there are no zombie battles, just an ambiguously tainted experiment.
my side of the mountain, by jean craighead george
This classic children’s book from 1959 tells the story of a boy who runs away from home and learns to live alone in the wilds of the Catskill Mountains. a burrow is dug under a tree. he learns to fish. he tames a falcon. his solitude is, for the most part, invigorating, wholesome, and creative. an excellent escape fantasy and a reminder of the brilliant pleasures of the solitary life (although few of those pleasures may be available in his apartment).
the plague, by albert camus
You might think this skinny novel is on so many pandemic book lists just because its title is literally the plague. But it’s so much more than that: I like to think of plague as an unexpected guide to self-care. You can take breaks, Camus reminds us, even in the most intense and devastating situations. so go swimming! I mean, you can’t go swimming. you are in quarantine listen to the existentialists: take a bath.
meditations in an emergency, by frank o’hara
just the collection of poetry you need. read the title poem here. “I am the least difficult of men,” she writes O’hara. “All I want is boundless love.”
my year of rest and relaxation, by ottessa moshfegh
In New York City, an alienated young woman tries to sleep for an entire year. this is a critically acclaimed book, loved by many discerning New Yorkers. I’d rather eat all the back issues of n+1 than finish this novel, but you, dear reader, may like it.
something that may surprise and discredit you, by daniel mallory ortberg (now daniel m lavery)
This collection of essays, from one of the co-founders of the cult feminist website the toast, is characteristically wry and charming. sir byron! evelyn waugh! the golden girls! But the stakes are high in these trials, a real struggle with faith, family, and transition. It’s a good book to read in quarantine, because if you cry while reading it in public, you can’t touch your face.
the decameron, by boccaccio
this collection of lively, bizarre, and often highly obscene stories was first published in italy in 1353. boccaccio’s framing device is the black plague. its protagonists, seven women and three men, retire to a villa on the outskirts of florence to avoid the pandemic. there, isolated for two weeks, they spend their time telling each other stories, with a different theme for each day. read some of them. (The New Yorker has some tips on translations.) or just turn your group chat into a group call, give everyone a topic and see what happens.
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