Books like “A Clockwork Orange”

What to read after “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 1932
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Dystopia”
In a future where citizens are engineered for contentment and kept calm with a drug called soma, Bernard Marx and the Savage John discover the cost of a stable, pleasure-driven society. John's arrival from a reservation exposes the emptiness behind the World State's comfort.
2
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury · 1953
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Dystopia”
- Satire
- Dystopia
Guy Montag is a fireman who burns books in a future where reading is a crime and screens fill every quiet moment. After a young neighbour asks him whether he is happy, curiosity makes him hide a book of his own, and he begins to question everything his job stands for.
3
Anthem
Ayn Rand · 1938
Similar atmosphere: “Dystopia” and “Philosophical”
- Dystopia
- Philosophical
In a future run by the collective, the word I has no meaning and all work is done for the good of all. Equality 7-2521 breaks the rules by doing forbidden research and falling in love, then flees a society that cannot allow an individual to exist.
4
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1969
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Philosophical”
- Satire
- Philosophical
Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain's assistant and prisoner of war in Dresden, becomes unstuck in time, living his life out of order among moments in the war and on another planet. His flat, looping account turns a firebombing and a life's small cruelties into a dark joke about fate.
5
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1924
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Dystopia”
In the glass city of OneState, citizens live by a strict timetable and are known only by numbers. When the mathematician D-503 begins to keep a private journal, a woman named I-330 draws him into a movement that wants to tear down the walls of the ordered world.
6
Animal Farm
George Orwell · 1945
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Dystopia”
- Satire
- Dystopia
The animals of Manor Farm drive out their human master and run the farm themselves, promising equality for all. The pigs slowly take control, and their revolution turns into a new kind of tyranny, showing how power can corrupt those who hold it.
7
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells · 1895
Similar atmosphere: “Dystopia” and “Philosophical”
- Dystopia
- Philosophical
An inventor builds a machine that carries him far into the future. He finds a gentle people living above ground and a sinister race below, and slowly learns what became of humanity. A short, influential tale of time travel and a dark vision of the end.
8
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller Jr. · 1959
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Philosophical”
- Satire
- Philosophical
After a nuclear war, monks in a desert abbey preserve the few books that survive, including a blueprint signed by a martyred engineer. Across centuries they copy, guard and argue over the relics while civilisation slowly rebuilds and then repeats its old mistakes.
9
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick · 1968
Similar atmosphere: “Dystopia” and “Philosophical”
- Dystopia
- Philosophical
In a dust-choked future, a bounty hunter is paid to retire androids that have escaped to Earth and passed as human. As he tracks them down he starts to question what makes a life real, and whether he can trust his own memories.
10
The Chrysalids
John Wyndham · 1955
Similar atmosphere: “Dystopia”
- Dystopia
In a post-nuclear Labrador, communities destroy deformed crops and animals and kill, sterilize or banish people who do not match the true form. A boy who can speak with his mind hides his gift among friends, until discovery forces them to flee toward a fabled safe place.
11
The Trial
Franz Kafka · 1925
Similar atmosphere: “Dystopia” and “Philosophical”
- Dystopia
- Philosophical
A clerk is arrested one morning and told he is on trial, though no one will say for what. As he tries to navigate a faceless legal system, his ordinary life unravels. A bleak, darkly funny novel about bureaucracy, guilt and power.
12
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 1949
Similar atmosphere: “Dystopia”
- Dystopia
In the totalitarian superstate of Oceania, every thought and word is watched. Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting the past, until he starts a diary and a secret affair. His small rebellion against a system that controls reality itself slowly closes in around him.