Books like Oryx and Crake
What should you read after Margaret Atwood’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Margaret Atwood
- 2003
- Dystopian fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Oryx and Crake
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
Atwood's other great extrapolation, built the same way: a narrator piecing together the before-times while trapped in the after, and nothing invented that hasn't happened somewhere.
- One survivor looking back
- Before and after the collapse
- A plausible near future
- Theocracy, not biotech
Best for the engineered humansBrave New World
Aldous Huxley
The ancestor of Crake's project: people designed to specification and content with it. Huxley asked the question first, and Atwood is plainly answering him.
- Genetic engineering gone loose
- Satire with a cold edge
- Corporations running everything
- 1930s prose and assumptions
Great match1984
George Orwell
The state-power half of the argument. Where Atwood's dystopia is run by shareholders, Orwell's is run by the Party, and the comparison sharpens both.
- Satire with a cold edge
- A plausible near future
- Corporations running everything
- Politics, not biology
Worth a look — with a warningThe Road
Cormac McCarthy
If the sections with Snowman alone in the ruins were the ones you could not put down, this is 250 pages of exactly that, stripped of everything else.
- One survivor looking back
- Before and after the collapse
- Bleak with no relief
Best for the biotech horrorNever Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
Children raised as spare parts, narrated by someone who never quite lets herself say so. The same subject as Crake's work, told entirely through what is left out.
- Genetic engineering gone loose
- A plausible near future
- One survivor looking back
- No apocalypse
Great matchStation Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel
A pandemic and its aftermath cut together so the world before keeps intruding on the world after. Same structure, warmer heart.
- Before and after the collapse
- One survivor looking back
- A plausible near future
- Hopeful in the end
Great matchThe Children of Men
P.D. James
Biology fails, humanity stops reproducing, and the end arrives as bureaucracy rather than explosion. Atwood's plausibility, with an English accent.
- A plausible near future
- Before and after the collapse
- Genetic engineering gone loose
- No engineering, just failure
Great matchFahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
Bradbury's target is the same as Atwood's: entertainment as anaesthetic, sold by companies with no interest in whether you notice.
- Corporations running everything
- Satire with a cold edge
- A plausible near future
- 1950s in its bones
Best for a gentler entry pointThe Giver
Lois Lowry
Engineered contentment for younger readers, and still sharp: a community that has edited out pain, colour and choice, and one boy given the memories back.
- Genetic engineering gone loose
- Satire with a cold edge
- A plausible near future
- Written for children
Worth a look — with a warningThe Maze Runner
James Dashner
An engineered plague, an organisation running experiments on children, and a survivor with no memory. The Atwood premise turned into a chase.
- Genetic engineering gone loose
- Before and after the collapse
- Thin prose and characters
Best for corporate ruleSnow Crash
Neal Stephenson
A future where governments have been replaced outright by franchises and private enclaves. Atwood's compounds, played for jokes and speed.
- Corporations running everything
- Invented brand names and jargon
- Satire with a cold edge
- Loud where Atwood is dry
Worth a look — with a warningThe Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
Kept for its media satire, which is sharper than its reputation: entertainment engineered from other people's suffering, watched by people who like it.
- Satire with a cold edge
- Corporations running everything
- YA action, not literary sf
Great matchThe Power
Naomi Alderman
Alderman was mentored by Atwood and it shows: one biological change, followed to its worst conclusion with the same refusal to flinch or reassure.
- Satire with a cold edge
- A plausible near future
- Genetic engineering gone loose
- Ensemble, no lone survivor
What should you read after Oryx and Crake?
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood 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 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood — atwood's other great extrapolation, built the same way: a narrator piecing together the before-times while trapped in the after, and nothing invented that hasn't happened somewhere.
If what stayed with you was genetic engineering gone loose, read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley instead: the ancestor of Crake's project: people designed to specification and content with it. Huxley asked the question first, and Atwood is plainly answering him. 1984 by George Orwell is the other strong option — the state-power half of the argument. Where Atwood's dystopia is run by shareholders, Orwell's is run by the Party, and the comparison sharpens both.
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