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Arboreality | Rebecca Campbell

 

Campbell’s brilliant cli-fi novella weaves an intergenerational story of human resilience against the backdrop of ongoing ecological collapse. Rooted in the dire consequences of unchecked colonial capitalism, the story juxtaposes grief and loss alongside survival and regeneration. A professor rescues books from the flooded and collapsing McPherson Library. A man plants fireweed on the hillside of his depopulated Vancouver Island suburb. An aspiring luthier poaches the last ancient Sitka spruce to make a violin for a child prodigy. Campbell’s astonishing vision pulls the echoing effects of small acts and intimate moments through this interconnected story of how a west coast community survives the ravages of climate change.

A gentle and thought-provoking narrative that lingers long after the last page.

The Antidote | Karen Russell

 

Despite its historical setting – the Dust Bowl of the 1930s – Karen Russell’s engrossing, hallucinatory drama of a Nebraska town in the throes of ecological breakdown feels achingly timely. At its heart is the question of memory and its suppression: of injustices that are deliberately forgotten only to rise again, of false memories handed solemnly down through generations, and of the vertiginous cost of allowing one view of history to prevail. Told from the point of view of a mystical “Prairie Witch” and her teenage acolyte, a repressed and lonely farmer, and a Black photographer tasked with documenting what remains of rural life, the story charts one small community’s battle to survive in a landscape it has destroyed, and with its own unstoppable demons.

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Earth 7 | Deb Olin Unferth

 

“Earth had gotten the best the universe had to offer, in all categories, and the achievement had nearly killed her.” Enter Unferth’s teenage protagonist Dylan Stein. Most of America has been reduced to a desert wasteland, yet Dylan longs to leave her home community of Sea Garden, a “luxury pod” on the ocean floor. Finally, at the “fully terraformed resort” of Vacationland, she meets and falls in love with Melanie–a girl so engineered that she can pass as a robot–and together they decide to create a genetic database as an “Earth backup” from which to rebuild the Earth. While Unferth writes elegiacally about humankind’s death drive, the wild energy of her comedy transcends the grief of humankind’s predicament, and raises a thousand smiles. And boy, do we need them.

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Daylight Come | Diana McCaulay

 

This haunting novel is set in a dystopian future where sunlight is rationed and controlled by a tyrannical regime. The story follows a young girl, Ava, as she navigates a world of scarcity, fear, and rebellion, all while grappling with her own family’s dark secrets. The novel explores themes of power, oppression, and resilience, drawing parallels to real-world issues of environmental degradation and authoritarianism. Ava’s journey is both gripping and poignant, making this a thought-provoking read.

Uprising | Tahmima Anam

 

A rebellion ignites amongst a community of sex workers on an isolated island in this fiercely moving novel – inspired by the real women of Banishanta, Bangladesh. Set on a desolate, sinking island, a group of children witness their mothers living lives of cruelty and servitude. Bought and sold by Amma, the sadistic madam who was once herself sold into slavery, the women have learned to accept their fate. Yet their children weave fantastic tales of escape, imagining that someday they will leave the island and enjoy a life of freedom.

When Kusum Khan, a young, educated woman from the city, is forcibly brought to the island, she too is subjected to Amma’s violent induction. Yet Kusum refuses to yield, and soon the collective complacency of her fellow prisoners turns into ferocity and defiance. Together, they begin a rebellion that will upend their island, their world and the very order of things.

An earth-shattering drama of resistance and female power, Uprising gives voice to the silenced through the story of a revolution no one saw coming.

Finalist in the Orwell Prize For Political Fiction, 2026.

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The Last Children of Tokyo | Yoko Tawada

 

Yoshiro thinks he might never die. A hundred years old and counting, he is one of Japan’s many ‘old-elderly’; men and women who remember a time before the air and the sea were poisoned, before terrible catastrophe promted Japan to shut itself off from the rest of the world. He may live for decades yet, but he knows his beloved great-grandson – born frail and prone to sickness – might not survive to adulthood. Day after day, it takes all of Yoshiro’s sagacity to keep Mumei alive.

As hopes for Japan’s youngest generation fade, a secretive organisation embarks on an audacious plan to find a cure – might Yoshiro’s great-grandson be the key to saving the last children of Tokyo?

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Dream State | Eric Puchner

 

Puchner’s engrossing multi-generational portrait of a groups of family and friends in Montana is a thoughtful examination of love, loss, and the enduring effects of past choices. But it is in its depiction of the desecration of wildlife and the creeping effects of climate breakdown that it excels. The story starts by an idyllic Montana lake in the present era, with the quickly-doomed wedding of Ceci and Charlie. But as the decades go by, we see how the lives of the bride, the groom, his best man and their families are shaped by good or bad luck, critical decisions, betrayals – and the creeping effects of wildlife habitat loss and climate breakdown. Like the best novels that deal with environmental issues, it’s in specifics – like the sinking water level in the once-pristine lake, or the disappearance of the native wolverine – that the present and the near-future are brought to poignantly exquisite life.

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The Signature of All Things | Elizabeth Gilbert

 

Elizabeth Gilbert may be best known for her searching memoirs, but her curiosity extends, in this enthralling historical novel, to the world of plants. The story follows Alma Whittaker, a brilliant and observant woman born into a botanical family in Philadelphia, who dedicates herself to the study of mosses. Through years of meticulous observation, she begins to notice patterns in how the plant spreads, competes, and adapts to its environment, and leads her to ideas resembling evolution and natural selection – years before Darwin’s Origin of Species.

Through one woman’s devotion to biological science, Gilbert shows how even the smallest forms of life can expose deep truths about survival, time, and the complexity of existence.

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Jeff VanderMeer | Area X

 

Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series, beginning with the iconic trilogy—Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptanceand extending to the fourth volume, Absolution, is an immersive, often disturbing exploration of the unknowable forces of nature, and humanity’s inability to understand and govern them. In evoking the uncanniness of plant and animal life in the mysterious nature reserve-cum-force-field known as Area X, VanderMeer offers a nuanced encounter with a universe that is simultaneously beautiful, horrifying, and transformative. This collection that cements his status as one of the most innovative writers of contemporary speculative literature.

 

The Tiger’s Share | Keshava Guha

 

Set against a backdrop of ecological collapse and political unrest, The Tiger’s Share is both a family and a state-of-the-nation novel unlike anything else in contemporary Indian fiction.

Tara, a successful Dehli lawyer, is everything her younger brother isn’t: dedicated, independent, thriving. When their beloved father retires, he summons them to a meeting. But what he has to say threatens to tear the family apart.

Tara’s friend Lila has it all: a great job, a lovely home, a beautiful family. But when Lila’s father dies unexpectedly, her brother wastes no time in claiming what he thinks is his.

Together, Tara and Lila are forced to confront the challenge that their ambition poses to patriarchal Delhi society.

‘A stylish and engaging tragi-comedy of manners . . . Keshava Guha is an astute and insightful observer of contemporary India’ Amitav Ghosh.