Apocalyptic novels have always been a favorite genre of mine. It’s interesting seeing the lengths that people will go through to survive when all factors are stacked against them. The list of novels below is some of the many great reads that opened my eyes to this genre. The characters in these novels are oftentimes faced with challenges that seem impossible to the reader but are left feeling so fulfilled after seeing a character complete the difficult tasks. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
Although this novel is not necessarily ‘apocalyptic,’ I couldn’t help but include it. Alexander Gordon Smith’s Lockdown is a high-stakes novel that follows Alex, a teenager who is wrongly accused of murder and sentenced to an underground prison. The Furnace Penitentiary is not a normal prison, but is a building where inhumane experiments take place. I’ve always been fascinated by characters who have to survive in an environment they cannot physically leave, and the Escape from Furnace series does this beautifully.
Prison Break meets Darren Shan in an unforgettable story of terror, evil and intrigue. Alexander Gordon Smith's cult teen series has been reissued with the bestselling US covers.
Beneath heaven is hell. Beneath hell is Furnace.
When thirteen-year-old Alex is framed for murder, his life changes forever. Now he is an inmate in the Furnace Penitentiary - the toughest prison in the world for young offenders. A vast building sunk deep into the ground, there's one way in and no way out.
But rowdy inmates and sadistic guards are the least of Alex's problems. Every night an inmate is taken…
I’m an awkward academic who thinks, writes, and teaches about US immigration and imprisonment regimes and their growth out of racism, imperialism, and nationalism. I’m strongly motivated by things that I hate. I want to understand how and why we are facing such catastrophic problems, so that we can figure out how to undo them. My work is partly motivated by my personal history as the daughter of immigrants who moved to support their families and survive in the aftermath of war. As a privileged person in the US, I'm not directly affected by the state violence I study. I also know that we're not going to have a future unless we get there together.
This book has hugely influenced my thinking on US racism, imprisonment, and immigration, especially my second book. By studying a long history of incarceration in Los Angeles, Lytle Hernandez demonstrates how “mass incarceration is mass elimination.” This argument was a revelation that opened new ways for me to see the connections among different people swept away into cages. Like Dunbar-Ortiz, she reveals how settler colonialism connects working-class white, Black, Indigenous, Chinese, and Mexican people targeted for arrest, imprisonment, and removal. Crucially, she reads “rebel archives” of those people who resisted their subjugation and fought for justice, showing how they never relinquished themselves to racist incarceration.
Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world's leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernandez documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest,…
Incarceration is a gigantic problem in the US, especially because of its connection to racial injustice. I have no firsthand experience with prison or the system, and yet it looms large in my imagination and my deepest fears. That should not be the case merely because I’m a Black gay American, but here we are. I feel that with the help of my mother and others, I have managed to sidestep a lot of the potential pitfalls of people’s misguided perception of my identity, but I have an active, paranoid imagination and profound survivor guilt, so I gravitate toward stories about people at who are odds with our society in ways that reflect that precarious status which allows me to explore a wide range of human experiences.
Genet’s prose really kicks a lot of others to the curb, even
in translation, and the curb is where he is most comfortable. To paraphrase Wilde, he was definitely in the gutter but looking at the stars.
His
visionary, unabashed grit, queer defiance, and uncanny lyrical ability really
should make him required reading for everyone. But if you’re a defiant freak,
you get mixed up in the prison system, and you need a North Star, you can’t do
much better than Genet, a beautiful, wild thinker about all things related to
the place of punishment and jails in society.
He truly lived the life he
described, which people love nowadays. The Thief’s Journal is shockingly
countercultural and exhilarating even now.
Jean Genet, French playwright, novelist and poet, turned the experiences in his life amongst pimps, whores, thugs and other fellow social outcasts into a poetic literature, with an honesty and explicitness unprecedented at the time. Widely considered an outstanding and unique figure in French literature, Genet wrote five novels between 1942 and 1947, now being republished by Faber & Faber in beautiful new paperback editions.
The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel; an account of his impoverished travels across 1930s Europe. The narrator is guilty of vagrancy, petty theft and prostitution, but his writing transforms such…
Incarceration is a gigantic problem in the US, especially because of its connection to racial injustice. I have no firsthand experience with prison or the system, and yet it looms large in my imagination and my deepest fears. That should not be the case merely because I’m a Black gay American, but here we are. I feel that with the help of my mother and others, I have managed to sidestep a lot of the potential pitfalls of people’s misguided perception of my identity, but I have an active, paranoid imagination and profound survivor guilt, so I gravitate toward stories about people at who are odds with our society in ways that reflect that precarious status which allows me to explore a wide range of human experiences.
Tayari is one of the best writers in America—no qualifiers!—and she also has the advantage of a razor-sharp, accessible style.
This heartbreaking book about a couple torn apart and remade by the husband’s incarceration is gripping and sharply observed, and the characters, Celestial and Roy, are unforgettable. But don’t take my word for it—ask Oprah!
As a writer and journalist in Iran, I knew many activists and journalists who spent time in solitary confinement. I noticed that this part of their prison experience was the hardest one for them to put to words, even those keen on sharing their experiences have a much easier time talking about the interrogation room but remain strangely reticent about the solitary cell. When I set out to write a novel about a bus driver who ends up in jail, I decided to dedicate several chapters of the book to his time in solitary confinement. That research sent me down the rabbit hole of interviewing former prisoners and reading widely about the solitary experience.
Those interested in the never-ending drama of US-Iranian relations since 1979 probably remember the affair of the mountain climbers. Three Americans, hiking the mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan, mistakenly crossed the border into Iran. They were taken to Evin prison in Tehran, where they were imprisoned for two years, a good part of which they spent in solitary confinement as Iran and the US used them as pawns in their complicated dance of diplomacy. After their release, the hikers wrote a memoir together. This is one of the best accounts of solitary confinement in Evin available in English.
Hikers held captive in Tehran tell their story in “a moving memoir by three individuals who found the strength to survive” (San Jose Mercury News).
During the summer of 2009, Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal, and Sarah Shourd were hiking in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan when they unknowingly crossed into Iran and were captured by border patrol. Wrongly accused of espionage, the three Americans ultimately found themselves in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison, where activists and protesters from the Green Movement were still being confined and tortured. Cut off from the world and trapped in a legal black hole, the three…
I've been reading fantasy for 42 years and writing it for 40, and because I was raised by badass women, I've always enjoyed tales of clever, kickass, indomitable heroines. I've written a bunch of them (a dozen books in an urban fantasy series about a sorcerer named Marla Mason; four books in the Axiom space opera series about ship captain Callie Machedo and her love interest, time refugee xenobiologist Elena Oh; contemporary fantasy/romance Heirs of Grace, about an art student who discovers a magical inheritance, and more). I'm also a longtime book reviewer, editor at SF/fantasy trade magazine Locus, and frequent award juror (Bradbury Prize, Philip K. Dick Award, and more), so... I think about SF/fantasy books a lot.
The Library at Mount Char is an astonishing puzzle-box of a novel, and one of the strangest and finest fantasies I've ever read.
Main character Carolyn was raised in a bizarre family of adopted siblings, taught magic by their enigmatic "father," and forced to live in isolation... but when their father dies, their world changes forever (and so does everyone else's). I actually re-read this novel immediately after finishing it the first time, because I wanted to experience it again while knowing how everything turned out, and it was even better.
“Wholly original . . . the work of the newest major talent in fantasy.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Freakishly compelling . . . through heart-thumping acts of violence and laugh-out-loud moments, this book practically dares you to keep reading.”—Atlanta Magazine
A missing God. A library with the secrets to the universe. A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.
Carolyn's not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas…
I grew up reading, mostly due to a speech impediment that left me awkward and shy. I was lucky enough to experience world travel at a young age. My parents' divorce set me on a different path. Five middle schools and seven high schools later, I volunteered as a Marine Corps infantryman. I left the USA in 2015 to travel the world, from Micronesia to Nepal to Honduras and even Ukraine, where I fought with the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.
This is the single greatest work of fiction ever written, reaching heights close to perfection. A life-changing read with utterly fascinating plots and caricatures that swallows hours with joyous ease.
This book is the book I set all other books against as the ultimate judge to decide its ultimate rating, thus making the Count of Monte Cristo the perfect ten.
The epic tale of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge, in its definitive translation
Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized…
I was born in New Jersey to an American mother and an Iranian father. I spent the first twenty years of my life living both in Tehran and New York, striving to fit and blend into whatever culture I happened to occupy at a given moment. I whined about this, wishing I was one thing or another. But after the 1979 Islamic Revolution erupted and my family was permanently exiled, I learned the true meaning of being careful about what you wish for. To connect with my lost Persian heritage, I began to write about it, and to write about living in the diaspora. It’s how I make sense of the world.
This is a memoir by a 32-year-old Iranian-American journalist who, in 2009, was accused and sentenced to 8 years in Evin Prison for being an American spy. Paraphrasing my review inThe San Francisco Chronicle, Saberi's skillful reconstruction of dialogue leads to a spot-on chronicle of the paranoia and utter buffoonery of the Iranian government and its apparatchiks. I was especially impressed by the way she survives her time in solitary confinement – the resources of her mind that keep her sane. Beyond that, this memoir is a kind of coming-of-age story for those of us in the diaspora who can be a bit naïve about how safe we are as journalists and US citizens in dictatorships. Saberi is freed after 4 months, thanks to international pressures, but she’s haunted by those she met in prison who are left behind.
“Between Two Worlds is an extraordinary story of how an innocent young woman got caught up in the current of political events and met individuals whose stories vividly depict human rights violations in Iran.” — Shirin Ebadi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
Between Two World is the harrowing chronicle of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi’s imprisonment in Iran—as well as a penetrating look at Iran and its political tensions. Here for the first time is the full story of Saberi’s arrest and imprisonment, which drew international attention as a cause célèbre from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and leaders across the…
I have been involved with teaching in prison for the last 22 years, and have taught everything from creative writing to meditation to college classes across carceral facilities in New York, California, and Massachusetts. As the founder and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative at Emerson College’s campus at Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord, I constantly work with faculty and students who are navigating the teaching and learning environment under some of the most adverse circumstances. These books have helped me feel less alone in this work.
I could not stop reading this book once I started, and I stayed up late into the night glued to its pages. Bauer, a journalist, takes us inside the prison where he got a job as a correctional officer. Through engrossing prose that pairs his daily experiences with carefully researched historical context about incarceration in the United States, Bauer shows what prisons represent in real time.
An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org
New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book
A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course…
I’ve always been fascinated by the human mind. The deeper I spelunked into that cave, the deeper into the dark I wanted to go. It’s not surprising that I became a writer obsessed with the unconscious, a clinical psychotherapist, and now a Professor of English. Before that, I was a professional rock singer/ guitarist, which also gained me entry into parts of life that most people don’t see. I tell my students, “I read because one life isn’t enough.” The books I’m recommending gave me a chance to enter other lives, and to inhabit minds—some strange and twisted, all astonishing—that I could not have accessed on my own.
This novel, translated from Norwegian, features a protagonist who is like a junkie-Christ, and an antagonist who makes Satan look like a kind old man. The atmosphere is as dark as I imagine an Oslo winter would be; the story, full of fascinating characters who propel the plot through twists and turns that kept me guessing and gasping. In one of the first, the junkie-Christ discovers that his father, a once-revered police officer, did not commit suicide as everyone believes, but was murdered. When junkie-Christ kicks heroin, snuffs his nimbus of sweetness and light, and sets out to avenge his father, the book, for me, was un-put-downable.
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of the bestselling Harry Hole series comes an electrifying tale of vengeance set amid Oslo's brutal hierarchy of corruption.
“The crime author of the moment.”—The New York Times Book Review
Sonny Lofthus has been in prison for almost half his life: serving time for crimes he didn't commit. In exchange, he gets an uninterrupted supply of heroin—and a stream of fellow prisoners seeking out his Buddha-like absolution. Years earlier Sonny’s father, a corrupt cop, took his own life rather than face exposure. Now Sonny is the center of a vortex of corruption: prison staff,…
