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NEVER LET ME GO
by Kazuo Ishiguro ( 2005) This heartbreaking and beautifully atmospheric Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel explores the moral complexity of science versus ethics in a chilling imagined world. A young woman, Kathy, looks back on the time she spent as a child with her friends, Ruth and Tommy, at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school nestled in the idyllic English countryside where perfect human clones are created with the goal of providing organs to others. Ishiguro’s prose is elegant and exacting in this devastating story.
ONLY EVER YOURS
by Louise O’Neill ( 2014) A harrowing look at society’s relentless infatuation with how women look and behave, Only Ever Yours is scalpel- sharp in its intensity. In a tightly controlled and misogynistic world, “eves” are young girls manufactured by genetic engineers with the sole intention of providing pleasure for men. With their pristine and alluring appearance, eves are taught to avoid “unacceptable emotions” such as anger or resistance. Focusing on 16- year- old girls Freida and Isobel, who are in their final year of being “prepped” to be the perfect female companions, O’Neill evokes a terrifyingly believable, morally empty and shallow world.
THE NATURAL WAY OF THINGS
by Charlotte Wood ( 2015) Set in the brutal thick heat and blaze of the desolate Australian outback,
The Natural Way of Things is a starkly atmospheric and vividly realised novel which tackles rape culture and sexual politics. Yolanda and Verla are two fierce women of 10 who wake up drugged and detained in an unknown compound on a dusty and remote location, unsure of how they got there. The prisoners are subjected to violence and degradation by sadistic guards in this tough and gritty tale of survival and extreme corporate control.
THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS
by Ursula K. Le Guin ( 1969) A keystone of feminist dystopian fiction, Le Guin’s daring and immersive masterpiece is a sensitively rendered but unsentimental look at race, gender and social control. Genly Ai is an ethnologist observing the people of the alien winter civilisation, Gethen. The androgynous people who inhabit this frosty planet are ambisexual, and can fluidly become male or female at the peak of their sexual cycle. Ai is drawn into the complex politics of the planet as it becomes clear how sex and gender can influence a culture.
PARABLE OF THE SOWER
by Octavia E. Butler ( 1993) Wealth inequality, corporate greed and climate change in a 2020s society form the bleak backdrop of this science fiction tale. Young African American woman Lauren possesses ‘ hyperempathy” — the ability to feel the pain and heightened sensations of other people. After her family is killed, she leaves the gated community where she lives only to find society has collapsed in chaos. Race, gender and violence are explored with a sharp psychological insight.