Tag Archive for: Climate fiction

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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.

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A Guardian and a Thief | Megha Majumdar

 

In the not too distant future, Kolkata is beset by scorching heat, floods and famine. Against this searing backdrop, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Michigan on a climate refugee visa.

As worsening food shortages hit, desperation drives people to desperate measures. Boomba, the thief, commits a series of escalating crimes in order to keep his family alive, but when he breaks into Ma’s home and steals the bag with all their immigration documents, the consequences turn out to be far-reaching.

Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of ferocious love and undefeated hope in the face of encroaching catastrophe.

The Salt Flats | Rachelle Atalla

 

Martha and Finn’s marriage is hanging by a thread. Martha, crippled by paralyzing climate anxiety, finds herself at odds with Finn, who steadfastly refuses to confront the demons of his past.

In a desperate attempt to repair their relationship, they join a group of privileged tourists on a pilgrimage to The Salt Centre, a mysterious retreat nestled deep within the Bolivian salt flats.

United by a shared quest for spiritual enlightenment, the group embark on a journey guided by an elusive shaman. As a series of salt ceremonies unfold, hallucinogenic episodes force each of them to confront their own versions of reality.

When the final ceremony descends into a nightmare, Martha and Finn are met with an ultimatum. Forced to grapple with the moral implications of their trip they must ask themselves: are some wounds too deep to heal?

“Original and bold, this is an ambitious and hugely imaginative novel.” – Lucie McKnight Hardy

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Don’t Call Me A Hurricane | Ellen Hagan

 

Five years after a hurricane tore through her Jersey Shore town, Eliza Marino is still piecing her life back together. Channeling her grief and fear into activism, she becomes determined to protect Clam Cove Reserve—a fragile stretch of marshland threatened by developers. Fighting to save the island is more than a cause; it’s how Eliza copes with the storm’s aftermath and the lingering dread that disaster could strike again.

When Eliza meets Milo at a party, he’s everything she resents: wealthy, a summer tourist, just passing through. She wants to hate him. But when she agrees—reluctantly—to teach him to surf, something shifts. As they spend time together, Eliza starts to let down her guard. Still, trust doesn’t come easy, and letting someone new into her carefully rebuilt life feels risky. Especially when Milo is hiding a painful secret of his own.

Told in lyrical verse, this poignant YA novel explores love, loss and resilience. Set against the backdrop of rising tides and vanishing shorelines, Eliza’s story is a powerful reflection on healing, community, and learning to connect with someone whose view of the world challenges—and maybe completes—your own.

The Devil’s Highway | Gregory Norminton

The Devil’s Highway is the folk name for a Roman road in north Surrey. The name is rooted in superstition, for in the Dark Ages, it must have seemed that only the devil could build anything so straight and strong. The Roman road marks the beginning of written history, of a civilisation that destroys in the name of progress. Physically and metaphorically, the Devil’s Highway runs through the interlinked narratives that make up the novel.

Set in the unforgiving sandy ‘wastes’ of Bagshot Heath, the three sections of The Devil’s Highway consist of three agons, or battles, against our self-destructive nature. In ‘Blueface’, an ancient British boy discovers a terrorist plot in which his own family is implicated. In ‘No Man’s Land’, two twenty-first century people – one traumatised by war, another by divorce – clash over the use and meaning of a landscape. Finally, in the futuristic ‘The Heave’ (where language is as degraded as the planet), a gang of feral children struggles to reach safety in a time of war.

Three narratives, one location, combine in a novel that spans centuries and challenges our dearest assumptions about civilisation. Combining elements of historical and speculative fiction with the narrative drive of pure thriller, The Devil’s Highway is an epic tale of love, loss, fanaticism, heroism and sacrifice.

“A brilliant deep-time meditation on how landscapes hold – and conceal – meanings.”~ Robert Macfarlane

“The best treatment of climate change in fiction I’ve come across. A powerful, essential novel.” ~ George Monbiot

 

Read more of our Climate Classics: timeless works exploring themes of climate change and biodiversity loss.

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The Swan Book | Alexis Wright

The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginal people still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change.

It follows the life of a mute teenager called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans driven from other parts of the country, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. The Swan Book has all the qualities which made Wright’s previous novel, Carpentaria, a prize-winning bestseller.

It offers an intimate awareness of the realities facing Aboriginal people; the wild energy and humour in her writing finds hope in the bleakest situations; and the remarkable combination of storytelling elements, drawn from myth and legend and fairy tale, has Oblivia Ethylene in the company of amazing characters like Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions, the Harbour Master, Big Red and the Mechanic, a talking monkey called Rigoletto, three genies with doctorates, and throughout, the guiding presence of swans.

 

Read our Librarian’s top climate change fiction picks by heading to our Fiction section

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The Stone Gods | Jeanette Winterson

On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet – pristine and habitable, like our own 65 million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. And off the air, Billie and Spike are falling in love.

What will happen when their story combines with the world’s story, as they whirl towards Planet Blue, into the future?

Will they – and we – ever find a safe landing place?

 

Read our Librarian’s top climate change fiction picks by heading to our Fiction section

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The Bone Clocks | David Mitchell

Run away, one drowsy summer’s afternoon, with Holly Sykes: wayward teenager, broken-hearted rebel and unwitting pawn in a titanic, hidden conflict. Over six decades, the consequences of a moment’s impulse unfold, drawing an ordinary woman into a world far beyond her imagining. And as life in the near future turns perilous, the pledge she made to a stranger may become the key to her family’s survival…

 

Read our Librarian’s top climate change fiction picks by heading to our Fiction section

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Earth | David Brin

Decades from now, an artificial black hole has fallen into the Earth’s core. As scientists frantically work to prevent the ultimate disaster, they discover that the entire planet could be destroyed within a year.

But while they look for an answer, some claim that the only way to save Earth is to let its human inhabitants become extinct: to reset the evolutionary clock and start over.

‘This book is not just a green globe-trotting adventure; it is also a thoughtful mix of warnings and promise.” – The Guardian

 

Read our Librarian’s top climate change fiction picks by heading to our Fiction section