BOOKS TO LIVE BY●Mariella Frostrup
Tales of postapocalyptic tenacity
help us face a world in turmoil
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arly on during the Covid outbreak I happened
upon an ebook called Station Eleven by Emily
St John Mandel. I had no idea it was about a
pandemic, but despite the times we were living
through I loved it. Now I’ve got a desire for more
postapocalyptic stories — there’s something very
uplifting about how people manage to survive.
I’ve just finished The Death of Grass by John
Christopher. What else is there in this genre?Y
ou’ve come to the right place. I’m never happier
than when I’m immersed in a dismal evocation of
our future world — even after a global pandemic
while Russia rattles the nuclear sabre amid the
rumblings of a third world war. There’s something
oddly comforting about confronting the worst
humankind can conjure. I was a dystopia addict in
my teens and I don’t think I was unique. Back then
pamphlets were shoved through the door on a daily
basis with (in hindsight) totally useless instructions on
how to escape radiation sickness from nuclear fallout,by placing rolled wet towels like draught excluders
around the house and keeping the windows closed.
I first dipped my toe into dystopian water as a teenager
with George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. During the
Cold War it seemed possible that we might end up in
a society where Big Brother was watching at all times
and the clocks struck 13. For those of my generation,
suckled on Orwell’s nightmare — for whom 1984 was
still a future date — the profound sense of relief when
that world didn’t come to pass is still a visceral memory.
I love the ingredients of a dystopian vision: the
gathering of familiar elements and the subversion of
them, the aspects of contemporary life maintained, the
parts discarded and the logical extension of our illogical
beliefs. These salutary tales involving the nightmares
of the past fast-forwarded into our future and the
extension of our current concerns into catastrophic
anti-utopias can be a transformative and transporting
experience — even sometimes like a crackling fire
in a cosy room while the storm outside rages. So I’m
delighted to share with you some of my favourites ■The Quickening
Talulah Riley
Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99
The second novel from the
actress who married Elon Musk
twice may have answers as to
why he’s so keen to leave our
planet. Riley imagines a world
taken over by a matriarchal
cult. Baby-bearing is deemed
our greatest hurdle, so dark
paths are taken to free us from
that burden. No matter how
often you’ve fantasised of a
world ruled by women, this will
put fear in your heart!The Flood
Maggie Gee
Saqi Books, £7.99
A successor to Gee’s brilliant
1998 novel The Ice People,
this picks up on its theme
of climate change. It’s set in
a flooded London, not so
unimaginable from today’s,
where the rich live on the
high ground and the poor are
under constant threat in their
waterlogged slums. Gee has
an uncanny ability to take
normal life to a terrifying but
coolly logical conclusion.The Second Sleep
Robert Harris
Cornerstone, £8.99
Now this really perturbed me.
Far from imagining some
glistening, chilly future,
Harris’s postapocalyptic world
is a medieval church-run
madhouse. Nothing from our
tech-reliant century survives
— a reminder of how little of
permanence there is for
humankind when we build on
the foundations of a worldwide
web. Weren’t we warned about
houses built on sand?Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Vintage, £16.99
Published in 1932, Huxley’s
vision of where we might wind
up was gentler than Orwell’s
— a place where babies are
engineered and “hatched”
healthy, into a caste system
that sorts the winners from the
losers, the drug soma softens
the edges and promiscuity is
the norm. Here ”everyone is
happy now”— but is the loss
of self-determination and
KATE MARTIN equality a price worth paying?^
The Sunday Times Magazine • 49