The End of the World Book: A Novel

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The very first novel you (probably) think of when someone says “post-apocalyptic,” in which a man and his son travel across a blasted-out country that ever gets explained. That isn’t always my favorite type of horror/thriller, which is why I haven’t decided whether I was crazy about it or not.

I’ve done my best to limit this list to books in which there is—or has been—some kind of literal apocalypse, excluding dystopias (like The Handmaid’s Tale) or simply bleak visions of the future.The apocalypse in Always Coming Home happened so long that none among the Kesh remember it—not even their songs know what caused it. Your favorite novel in which a flu pandemic wipes out civilization in a matter of weeks (yikes) and a band of entertainers wander the decimated land, putting on Shakespeare plays for the survivors. But it should be mentioned that this is also a tremendously trying read—I nearly gave up halfway through. I was desperate to find out why things were the way they were and what would happen to all the characters.

Uh-oh, overflow, population, common food/ But it'll do, save yourself, serve yourself/ World serves its own needs/ Listen to your heart bleed” — R. The End of This World makes clear that, in addition to being a crisis of political, economic, and ecological dimensions, Global North-spurred climate change also represents a relational crisis, one in which the bonds between communities — and between humans and other living organisms, including land — have been forcefully and intentionally severed. The story, although told from Lowrie’s point of view centres on the two teens as we get to know what life is like in the future where no more humans are born.The End of This World presents an alternative to the scorched earth reality of colonial capitalism: a new economy based upon ecological restoration and the revitalization of human spiritual integrity. An encyclopedia of memory —from A to Z— The End of the World Book deftly intertwines fiction, memoir, and cultural history, reimagining the story of the world and one man’s life as they both hurtle toward a frightening future. This is not usually discussed as a post-apocalyptic novel, and indeed it depends on how you read it, but let me present my case: if you take the narrator’s word for it, she is the last woman alive on earth, typing along to keep herself occupied, with no hope of ever encountering another soul again.