What would be a contemporary novel (or novella) of the caliber and likeness of 1984?

Maybe “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood? I read it a long time ago but it is a similar (in some ways) novel of dystopia and very powerful.

If you’ve read 1984 then I imagine you might have read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. If you haven’t, do so. It’s a great book that features a dystopian society similar to 1984.

I definitely, definitely second The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ve not read 1984 but I’ve read enough about it to know that The Handmaid’s Tale is pretty much along the same lines. It’s a very disturbing novel, one of my favorites.

Also by Margaret Atwood is “Oryx and Crake,” a fantastic dystopian novel that takes place after the fall of man and features flashbacks to a corporatist world not all that unlike ours.

A lot of people aren’t told that 1984 and Brave New World were more or less made possible by a lesser known novel called We by one Yevgeny Zamyatin.

You may be interested in that. It is not, however, contemporary.

”The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, most life on earth.

“The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006.” Source.

It’s a few years old, but for nonfiction you could check out the USA PATRIOT act. :(

I second The Road.

Okay, I am ready for abuse on this.
Fight Club is really a remarkable read. It has new thoughts on what we have become as a consuming culture, and an anti-hero trying to bring things down.
I loved the movie, but many of the thoughts are lost when spit out in 2 hours.

Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five ought to be mentioned though I don’t know that they are much newer than 1984. I love Catch-22.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities I thought Brave New World was rather heavy handed, what with the last chapter being dedicated to him telling you what the book meant. Up until then I would have just called it overt.

The Road has been on my reading list for a while, as has Fight Club. Unfortunately its a very saturated list. The movie is going to force it up on the list though. I hate to see the movie before reading the book.

@NewZen Not to step on anyone’s toes, but I think some of the recommendations, while excellent reads, aren’t that similar to 1984 (like Catch-22, Fight Club and The Road).

If you could be a little bit more specific about which elements you enjoyed in 1984, we’d have an easier time recommending books.

Maybe “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” although thats more post-apocalyptic / Sci-fi (It’s the book Blade Runner was based on)

@all Thanks!

@drdoombot There is nothing like 1984, which was written in 1948 oddly enough. The post-war to end all wars to be the hopefully last war feel about it. There’s just something so brilliant yet concise, so Chauncey Gardnener, so je ne sais quoi about it…