1984
George Orwell, 1984
(repression and oppression in grim totalitarian future)
Bleak Prospects (nightmare scenarios for the future of human society)
Patrick White, A Fringe of Leaves ("civilised" woman in distress, rehabilitated by contact with aboriginal "primitive" people)
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid"s Tale (grim future: totalitarian, religious oppression, anti-women)
George Turner, The Sea and Summer
Paul Theroux, O-Zone (efforts to make a viable post-nuclear society in US wilderness)
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (crime and class-war in future Britain)
Inner Hell (the nightmare is inside us)
Will Self, My Idea of Fun
William Golding, Lord of the Flies (choirboys lost on desert island revert to satanic evil, humanity"s dark side)
Georges Simenon, The Murderer (criminal psychologically destroyed by guilt)
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (wilderness as a satanic, engulfing force, human evil symbolised)
Fay Weldon, Life and Loves of a She-Devil (betrayed wife takes macabre, comic revenge)
The Ghastly Past (totalitarian, fundamentalist nightmares from "real" history)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (religious bigotry in Pilgrim Fathers America)
Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (Catholic missionaries test their faith in 1870s Mexican wilderness)
Graham Greene, Brighton Rock (crime and redemption in 1930s England)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (repression of dissidents in Stalinist labour-camp)
Maxim Gorky, Foma Gordeev (underbelly of Tsarist Russia in decline)