The most recent Booker prize award for literature went to the Irish author Paul Lynch for his dystopian novel ‘Prophet Song’. This type of literature is becoming very popular, especially among young readers, and the reasons are not difficult to understand.
The Chair of the judges of the Booker award committee, Esi Edugyan, said of Lynch’s novel: “We felt unsettled from the start, submerged in – and haunted by – the sustained claustrophobia of Lynch’s powerfully constructed world”. This is not an unusual feature of a dystopian novel.
Dystopian fiction usually presents a world where humans are living a world of suffering. Margaret Atwood’s ‘Handmaiden’s tale’ or even the popular ‘Hunger games’ series are both examples of literature which is projecting a future world which is dominated by forces beyond human beings.
Dystopia reflects a world gone wrong, while its opposite, ‘utopia’, refers to a perfect world which could never exist.
With climate change, the pandemic, the fear of technological control through artificial intelligence and growing certainty of wars, it is no surprise that fiction writers show a world where everything we take for granted is taken away from us. For young adults, this world does not require much imagination – it is actually staring at them.
One of the reasons why this genre of literature is popular among teenagers and young adults is because it asks the questions which they are asking: who are you? How do you fit in this world? How can you make this world better?
In this sense, dystopian fiction makes young readers aware of challenges that they could face in the real world and how they could deal with them. The pandemic of the last few years showcased just how near and present this kind of world is to us, and how we are not as unconnected to a world of disease and devastation as we thought we were. This is another reason why dystopian fiction is so popular with teenagers: it allows them to play the ‘what if’ game, see the devastation it brings, but also point to solutions.
Critics have considered that this form of literature promotes problem solving skills, prepares readers for an uncertain future and gives them an honest perspective. This is even more true now when so many people have experienced empty shelfs at a supermarket, or grandmothers being delivered food metres away from them during the pandemic.
Whether it is a world submerged in water, a war on another planet, surviving an apocalyptic event or living in a world of machines, dystopian fiction reflects our own world, only at an extreme.
These stories might have gone too far in narrative and be unsettling, but they also offer hope – a reminder that we can change the world if we have the will and ability.
The challenge of our times is to confront the issues which such fiction poses to us and create the means to face them and solve the problems suggested in such a world.
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