Here are 100 books that The Wall fans have personally recommended if you like
The Wall.
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I’ve been a sci-fi/fantasy fan ever since my dad introduced me to the original Star Trek (in reruns) and The Lord of the Rings in my youth. I’ve always loved thinking about possibilities—large and small—so my work tends to think big when I write. I also write poetry, which allows me to talk about more than just the everyday or at least to find the excitement within the mundane in life. These works talk about those same “possibilities”—for better or worse, and in reading, I walk in awareness of what could be.
Cormac McCarthy does the impossible in this book—he writes an emotionally satisfying, literary-minded travelogue of horrors. It shatters the reader but then lifts them up with its beautifully wrought prose.
Be patient: the novel gets brutally dark before the light.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle).
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if…
My family could never afford vacations when I was growing up, so I had to travel in my imagination through what I read. But that allowed me even greater freedom—I could go back in time, forward into the future, and everything in between. This skill led me to research and write my books today and have a career as an award-winning author and editor. History, to me, is only one side of the story—what about all the people in the past who never had the chance to speak? Alternate history is a way to explore the voices we’ve never heard except through a writer’s imagination.
I’ve long been inspired by Butler’s writing, which features BIPOC characters front and center. As a multiracial person, I seldom saw people who looked and thought like me in the older fiction I read.
The notable thing about this book is that it’s technically science fiction, not alternate history, since the novel's beginning in 2024 (this year!). However, much of what Butler wrote has come to pass, raising one question: Has her vision of the future become an alternate version of the past? I love trying to wrap my head around that conundrum.
The extraordinary, prescient NEW YORK TIMES-bestselling novel.
'If there is one thing scarier than a dystopian novel about the future, it's one written in the past that has already begun to come true. This is what makes Parable of the Sower even more impressive than it was when first published' GLORIA STEINEM
'Unnervingly prescient and wise' YAA GYASI
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We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.
America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to…
I’ve always been curious about how stories shape how we see the world. As a child, I noticed there were countless conflicting stories explaining how things worked. But which stories were the real ones? Which were true? At university, I studied the stories we tell ourselves about how the world will end. And as we live in times that can feel quite apocalyptic, I’m particularly fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what the future holds. If society dissolved around us, what stories would we tell ourselves to keep going? Are we telling those stories now?
I love pondering how stories shape our understanding of the world around us. This book has so much to say about stories and storytelling and is written so cleverly and heartbreakingly that I couldn’t put it down. I love how the child protagonist tells us her story while there’s another story in the background. I love how it made me feel about my role as an author.
I found this story surprisingly dark to be a children’s book. But it’s dark in a way that reminds me of being scared of the monster under the bed as a child, knowing that, as long as you lie absolutely still, the monster might not exist–or it might already be on its way.
An unforgettable journey through the stars, to the very heart of what makes us human. The incredible Newbery Medal-winning novel from Donna Barba Higuera.
"Gripping in its twists and turns, and moving in its themes - truly a beautiful cuento." - NEW YORK TIMES
Habia una vez . . .
There lived a girl named Petra Pena, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita.
But Petra's world is ending. Earth will soon be destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children - among them Petra and her family - have…
I’ve always been curious about how stories shape how we see the world. As a child, I noticed there were countless conflicting stories explaining how things worked. But which stories were the real ones? Which were true? At university, I studied the stories we tell ourselves about how the world will end. And as we live in times that can feel quite apocalyptic, I’m particularly fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what the future holds. If society dissolved around us, what stories would we tell ourselves to keep going? Are we telling those stories now?
This play, which I’ve read as a script but not seen performed, is a genuine treat. It hits the sweet spot for me: it is a delicious cross-section of ‘post-apocalyptic’ and ‘stories about stories.'
I also loved it for just how weird it was. It’s such a bizarre–yet realistic–depiction of how stories change over time, and it’s the only thing I’ve ever read that has made me want to write a play. It’s probably the oddest text I ever recommend to people.
"One of the most spectacularly original plays in recent memory."Entertainment Weekly
"Fascinating and hilarious . . . With each of its three acts, Mr. Burns grows grander."Village Voice
"When was the last time you met a new play that was so smart it made your head spin? . . . Mr. Burns has arrived to leave you dizzy with the scope and dazzle of its ideas . . . with depths of feeling to match its breadth of imagination."The New York Times
An ode to live theater and the resilience of The Simpsons, Anne Washburn's apocalyptic comedy Mr. Burns"even better…
I’m an Australian author and artist who is quite cautious and introverted by nature, but very curious and playful at heart. I make books that help people untangle what’s on their mind today and shift their thinking in creative ways, often using visual metaphors. My latest book, Guidebook to the Unknown, was created during the long lockdowns we had in Melbourne (and all over the world of course) during the pandemic. It was my way of exploring how to calm an anxious mind and find meaning in my daily life, right here and now, without knowing what tomorrow will bring.
This story has stayed with me for years. A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains and wakes up to an inexplicable new reality—she’s totally alone in the world, so it seems, and has to learn to fend for herself. We journey into the unknown with her as she reports on the mental and physical challenges of her new daily life… and it stirs up so many interesting questions about who we are without connection and community, and where meaning can be found in the most stripped-back life.
“I can allow myself to write the truth; all the people for whom I have lied throughout my life are dead…” writes the heroine of Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall, a quite ordinary, unnamed middle-aged woman who awakens to find she is the last living human being. Surmising her solitude is the result of a too successful military experiment, she begins the terrifying work of not only survival, but self-renewal. The Wall is at once a simple and moving talk — of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the…
As an Indian writer of contemporary fiction revolving around family, relationships, emotions, and hope, I am constantly on the lookout for similar novels to take inspiration from them and learn how to build beautiful, well-etched characters and portray heart-wrenching emotions. I love books that make me cry as they give me a fulfillment like nothing else. I love characters that are likable and make me feel a strong connection with them. And I like to write similar characters in my books as well. The readers of my novel The Fragile Thread of Hope have corroborated the same. I live in Gangtok, a hill station in northeast India.
Employing delectable metaphors and classy language, Stormy Hazika scripts a moving novel about love that defies the barriers of age and time. The unorthodox relationship between Ryeed, a professor and Nikita, his young student, is penned with such skill and depth that I couldn’t believe it’s her debut novel. I loved reading about the trials and tribulations they face from their respective families, their sacrifices, and how destiny gives them second chances. Several lines filled me with inspiration and tugged at my heartstrings. A wondrous novel indeed.
Devastated by the death of his wife, university Professor Ryeed Lahan initially ignores the attentions of the very young and attractive Nikita Adhikari, a young, college student who refuses to leave him alone. Gradually, Lahan begins to believe that he is being given a second chance at happiness. But Destiny has more challenging choices in store for him and Lahan is eventually compelled to make decisions that will forever alter the course of his life. A narrative of love, hate, betrayal and trust, A RIVER ON THE WALL explores the extraordinary range of human emotion that the ordinary individual experiences.…
Do you see the pattern in the five books I’ve recommended? In each of them, a woman writer explores the darker side of human nature and lures the law-abiding reader to explore it, too. I do not expect to ever commit a murder or to have to cover one up for the sake of a loved one. But could I? Could the person next to me in the grocery store line? Hmmm, I wonder. Traditional mystery stories and police procedurals reassure the reader that in the end, justice will be served and order restored. The women writers of noir/psychological suspense make us contemplate the world very differently.
The Blank Wallis a departure from my first three recommendations. It focuses on a woman who leads a frazzled but ordinary life during World War II. She must keep her family and home going while her husband is at war. She has to fight a source of evil that invades her home to preserve the norms that seem all-important to her. The fight means stepping outside of those very norms. I recommend this book as an exploration of what it means to do whatever it takes to protect a loved one.
In The Blank Wall (1947) ‘a suburban matron, harassed by wartime domestic problems – her husband is overseas – finds herself implicated in the murder of her young daughter’s extremely unattractive beau’ (The New Yorker). An outstanding example of the psychological thriller genre, ‘worthy of the great Patricia Highsmith herself,’ as Lady Antonia Fraser said in the Spectator, it was filmed as The Reckless Moment in 1949 and as The Deep End in 2001, starring Tilda Swinton. In 1950 Raymond Chandler asked his English publisher, ‘Does anybody in England publish Elisabeth Sanxay Holding? For my money she’s the top suspense…
I always want to be where I am not. This was why I read sci-fi and fantasy as a child. This was why I left the country of my birth and became a professional nomad. This is why I am spellbound by mountains I will never climb and oceans I will never dive into. Imagination can take you everywhere. It took me to the academy, where speculative literature became my scholarly field, and to the publishing world, where I am now getting ready for the launch of my eighth novel. When you are at home nowhere, you are at home everywhere–including on the summits of impossible mountains.
I first read this book when my baby son was teething. I cradled him in my arms, walked around, and kept reading, unwilling to put it down. Since then, I have reread it several times. The goal of fantasy and science fiction is to transport you into a different world, and Silverberg, a veteran SF writer, knows how to do just that.
The impossible mountain of the book, the Wall, so tall and so sheer that nobody who tries to climb it comes back unchanged (or comes back at all), has loomed in my imagination ever since. I want to be the one to scale it and to find out what waits at the summit. And even though I know the ending, the thrill of discovery is still there every time I reread it.
Chosen to lead the forty men and women from the village of Jespodar in their annual quest to scale the Wall, a monstrous assemblage of cliffs, Poilar Crookleg is finally able to realize his lifelong dream
I’ve been a soldier, designer, educator, farmer, and remain a philosopher and writer. I defy the classification of being either practical or theoretic. I have worked on environmental issues for over thirty years, including urban, post-conflict, and climate change projects in Australia, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. I have written over twenty books on design, cities, conflict, and politics. I am driven to understand the complexity of the world in which I live and, thereafter, act based on the knowledge gained–my book list reflects this passion for knowledge, and my life evidences a commitment to act.
As one of my favorite novels, I find something unexpected every time I read this book. It takes you to a dystopic world, not so much as what it would look like, but how it would feel. I find it affirmative in its negativity. It takes me to what I value and wants to protect, cherish, and continue to experience. It has been part of a lesson I learned long ago and have lived by.
If you want things to be better, what is bad has to be confronted without turning away and surmounted by overcoming, adaptation, or acceptance.
Paul Auster's dystopian future from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: 'a literary voice for the ages' (Guardian)
'That is how it works in the City. Every time you think you know the answer to a question, you discover that the question makes no sense . . .'
This is the story of Anna Blume and her journey to find her lost brother, William, in the unnamed City. Like the City itself, however, it is a journey that is doomed, and so all that is left is Anna's unwritten account of what happened.
I am, first and foremost, a reader. I started writing because my debut novel, releasing September 7, wouldn’t leave me alone. Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction tends to have that impact on me as a reader, so I wanted to create that same impact in other readers. Lately, my TBR has been dominated by indie-authored books, given my own decision to pursue indie publishing. I love the dystopian classics—especially Alduous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut, and George Orwell- and I read the latest traditionally published dystopian books. But I find indie authors like the ones I’ve featured here tell compelling stories about important topics that perhaps many traditional publishers won’t publish.
Emma Ellis spins the most horrifying yet hope-filled stories of dystopian societies. In book one of the Eyes Forward series, the world is in a population crisis. Resources are heavily rationed, and the governments of the world are actively taking steps to curb population growth.
That’s when Mae gets pregnant and learns she must find a “life donor”—someone who agrees to die so that the baby may live—or abort her unborn child. I appreciated how Ellis threaded the horror of a forced abortion into a gripping tale of human resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.
The plot twists and turns kept me on the edge of my seat, yet the message of the book made me think about how we steward our natural resources. This book is perfect for Octavia Butler, 1984, and Brave New World fans.
★★★★★ Utterly terrifying, addictive and yet so full of love. -Amazon review
★★★★★ Great writing and a truly gripping story. -Amazon review
★★★★★ Dark, disturbing and deeply compelling. -Amazon review
Mae finds herself pregnant in a world where the global population has hit twenty billion, and governments decree that no child may be born without a life being sacrificed in return.
With growing unrest and violence towards pregnant women, Mae must navigate a hostile world to secure a future for her unborn child — no matter the cost. When the stakes are so high, how far would you go to…
