We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article.
12 dystopian books you should read if you like The Handmaid's Tale
Offred has some good company.
Last year, Hulu's televised interpretation of The Handmaid's Tale landed on Channel 4 and we were all immersed in the world of Gilead. Whether it inspired you to read the book for the first time, or revisit it once again post- school, Offred’s story is just the beginning. Here, 12 more titles to consider:
When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
Meet Hannah Payne, a 26-year-old who wakes up in a prison cell after her skin’s been “chromed” red for murder. (Think Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, but set in the future). She’s sentenced for 16 years as a chrome because of a terminated pregnancy from an affair with a celebrity evangelist, who happens to be married. The book’s setting paints a haunting future for the rest of us IRL if things continue to go south: Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion is illegal in 42 states, and a group called the Fist of Christ monitors all.
BUY NOW £8.99, Amazon
The Jewel by Amy Ewing
Like Offred, The Jewel’s protagonist is not addressed by her real name. #197 (Violet, formerly) is a servant purchased at auction to work at the estate of the Duchess of the Lake. There’s a forbidden love affair with a boy who also works for the Duchess, plenty of secrets, and of course, the royal lifestyle that’s not as glamorous as it seems.
BUY NOW £7.99, Amazon
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Eighteen-year-old Lauren Olamina is on the run after her entire family is murdered in their gated Los Angeles community. Her advantage in this whole mess? Hyperempathy – the ability to feel for the people around her, which gives way to a religion she creates called Earthseed. The sequel, Parable of the Talents, picks up five years later in Acorn, a community founded by Lauren, against a backdrop of a crumbling America.
BUY NOW £6.43, Amazon
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Consuelo Ramos (Connie) has been prescribed a ton of drugs while imprisoned in a mental hospital in New York. She meets Luciente, who’s from the future or possibly, Connie’s own imagination — it’s unclear. Luciente claims to be from 2137, when present-day problems like pollution, homophobia, racism, and totalitarianism are obsolete save for the death penalty and war.
BUY NOW £0.99, Amazon
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
When a story opens with an actor who dies of a heart attack while playing King Lear on stage, you know that’s not the worst of what’s to come: a horrifying flu pandemic. The novel speeds up 20 years to follow the Travelling Symphony, a group of artists led by Kirsten Raymonde, who was 8 and in the audience at the time of the actor’s death. Mandel’s beautiful depiction of the survival of human culture and art in a post-apocalyptic world earned it the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2015.
BUY NOW £6.11, Amazon
Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
The second book from Lowry’s The Giver Quartet series, Gathering Blue centres around 16-year-old Kira, who was born with a deformed foot and whose talents for weaving makes her invaluable in a society that shuns the imperfect.
BUY NOW £5.99, Amazon
The Children of Men by P.D. James
It's 2021, the year the “last human being to be born on Earth” is killed in a pub brawl and the year Dr. Theodore “Theo” Faron begins his journal, which makes up the bulk of James’s novel. Hopefully, in four years IRL, the world won’t have to deal with a mass fertility problem.
BUY NOW £8.10, Amazon
The Big Lie by Julie Mayhew
Set in Britain in 2014 under Nazi Rule — yes, Nazi Rule — teenage figure skating hopeful Jessika Keller questions the society she grew up in after her friend Clementine dares to do the same.
BUY NOW £7.42, Amazon
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Like The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood uses flashbacks to tell the story of Snowman, who used to be called Jimmy and who used to live in a world dominated by big corporations and overconsumption. Through these flashbacks, you learn how Snowman/Jimmy arrived at his present state of starvation and solitude, and how a friend named Crake fits into all this. Oryx and Crake is the first of a trilogy, followed by the equally excellent The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam.
BUY NOW £9.97, Amazon
The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson
A love story. Robots. People changing their own DNA to stay young. A new planet. What more could you ask for in sci-fi book? Any book?
BUY NOW £8.99, Amazon
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Welcome to Stillness, a place where climate change is so real, there’s a 'Fifth Season' (get it?) and the constant threat of disaster coming at full force. Good luck trying to read this in multiple sittings: the deeply emotional characters in Essun, Syen, and Damaya deserve all the praise. Come for Jemisin’s brilliant prose, stay for the two handy glossaries. God, I love a good glossary.
BUY NOW £6.11, Amazon
The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons
Aya and girls like Aya are sold at auction so they can breed for their owners. Like The Handmaid’s Tale, Simmons’s book serves as essential commentary on women’s rights, only with a generation much younger than Offred and Ofglen’s.
BUY NOW £7.99, Amazon
The best new novels are steamy novels
The best books coming out in 2026
The best books of 2025
Read an extract of R.F. Kuang's Katabasis novel
