Books like Lord of the Flies
What should you read after William Golding’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- William Golding
- 1954
- Literary fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Lord of the Flies
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall match1984
George Orwell
Golding's boys invent tyranny in a fortnight; Orwell shows you the finished product, staffed and funded. Same argument about what people do with power once nobody stops them.
- Civilisation as thin paint
- An ending that offers no comfort
- Cruelty as a group activity
- Adults and a state, not children
Best for children forced to kill childrenThe Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
Collins takes Golding's premise and makes the adults responsible: the same arena, the same alliances that curdle, except here somebody built it on purpose and is selling tickets.
- Cruelty as a group activity
- An island that turns hostile
- Children left to govern themselves
- Young adult, first person
Great matchBrave New World
Aldous Huxley
The opposite experiment: instead of asking what happens when the rules vanish, Huxley asks what happens when they are perfected, and finds a different horror waiting.
- Civilisation as thin paint
- The group picks a scapegoat
- Cruelty as a group activity
- Satirical rather than savage
Best for the collapse of a good ideaAnimal Farm
George Orwell
Watch a fair arrangement rot into a boot on a neck in ninety pages. It is the conch and the painted faces again, with pigs, and Orwell shows the machinery more clearly.
- Rules that stop working
- The group picks a scapegoat
- Civilisation as thin paint
- A fable with talking animals
Great matchFahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
Bradbury's crowd doesn't need an island; it burns books for entertainment and chases a man on live television. Group cruelty as a leisure activity, in a hundred and sixty pages.
- Cruelty as a group activity
- Civilisation as thin paint
- An ending that offers no comfort
- Adults in a functioning state
Best for the gentler classroom pairingThe Giver
Lois Lowry
Often taught beside Golding for good reason: another community that has decided what human nature requires, and one boy who works out what the decision costs.
- Civilisation as thin paint
- Cruelty as a group activity
- Children left to govern themselves
- Written for younger readers
Great matchThe Maze Runner
James Dashner
Boys with no adults, an improvised government, jobs handed out, and a monster in the dark that keeps the whole arrangement honest. Golding's setup, played entirely for thrills.
- Children left to govern themselves
- Fear given a name
- Rules that stop working
- Thriller, not moral argument
Worth a look — with a warningBattle Royale
Koushun Takami
A school class dumped on an island and told only one goes home. It is Golding without the metaphor — every friendship tested in the crudest possible way.
- Cruelty as a group activity
- An island that turns hostile
- Civilisation as thin paint
- Extremely graphic violence
Best for children turning savage under pressureEnder's Game
Orson Scott Card
Card's children are isolated from adults and left to sort out their own hierarchy, and the bullying that results is as ugly as anything on Golding's beach.
- Children left to govern themselves
- The group picks a scapegoat
- Cruelty as a group activity
- Military science fiction frame
Worth a look — with a warningThe Road
Cormac McCarthy
For the reader who wants Golding's thesis pushed to its end: with the institutions gone for good, McCarthy's survivors have organised themselves into something considerably worse than face paint.
- Civilisation as thin paint
- An ending that offers no comfort
- Cruelty as a group activity
- No children's world at all
Great matchGone
Michael Grant
Everyone over fifteen vanishes from a Californian town and the children left behind have about a week before it becomes a warlord problem. Golding for the young adult shelf.
- Children left to govern themselves
- Rules that stop working
- Cruelty as a group activity
- Superpowers enter the plot
Great matchThe Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
Atwood's Particicution scene is Golding's ring of boys almost exactly, with the state supplying the excuse. Ordinary people made into a mob, on schedule.
- Cruelty as a group activity
- Civilisation as thin paint
- The group picks a scapegoat
- Adult, gendered subject matter
Worth a look — with a warningThe Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
On this list solely for the scapegoat mechanism: a community that needs someone to carry its shame and pins the mark on her in public. Everything else about it is different.
- The group picks a scapegoat
- Civilisation as thin paint
- Dense nineteenth-century prose
What should you read after Lord of the Flies?
Lord of the Flies by William Golding works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is 1984 by George Orwell — golding's boys invent tyranny in a fortnight; Orwell shows you the finished product, staffed and funded. Same argument about what people do with power once nobody stops them.
If what stayed with you was cruelty as a group activity, read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins instead: collins takes Golding's premise and makes the adults responsible: the same arena, the same alliances that curdle, except here somebody built it on purpose and is selling tickets. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is the other strong option — the opposite experiment: instead of asking what happens when the rules vanish, Huxley asks what happens when they are perfected, and finds a different horror waiting.
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