Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Paris Review

    How to Live in a Dystopian Fiction

    by Adam O’Fallon Price Jun 28, 2018 6 minutes

    Albert Robida, Le vingtième siècle, ca. 1880.

    A curious feature of most dystopian fiction is that it begins in medias res. It’s a stylistic convention of the genre, and it applies to most dystopian lit that comes to mind, from Nineteen Eighty-Four to Brave New World to Never Let Me Go. As pure narrative strategy, it makes sense. After all, novels in general must hook a reader quickly, and there are few things hookier than unfolding disaster. Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, for example, begins with twenty utterly gripping pages of the first hours of a superplague wiping out Toronto (and the world). There is something compelling about this type of introduction—it carves narrative down to a brutal logic in which the only two options are survival and death.

    The TV adaptation of ’s , which will wrap up its second season in July, is the most recent popular example of this phenomenon. The viewer is dropped, from the

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Paris Review

    The Paris Review35 min read
    An Eye In The Throat
    My father answers the phone. He is twenty-three years old, and, as everyone does in the nineties, he picks up the receiver without knowing who is calling. People call all day long, and my parents pick up and say, “Hello?” and then people say, “It’s C
    The Paris Review1 min read
    Credits
    Cover: Courtesy of Nicolas Party and the Modern Institute /Toby Webster Ltd. Page 12, courtesy of Alice Notley; pages 32, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48, 52, 55, 56, courtesy of Jhumpa Lahiri; page 59, photograph by Marco Delogu, courtesy of Jhumpa Lahiri; pages
    The Paris Review19 min read
    The Beautiful Salmon
    I’ve always loved salmon. Not to eat, as I don’t eat fish, but I’ve always loved salmon in general because salmon jump and no one knows why. They jump all over the place—out of rivers, up waterfalls. Some say they jump to clean their gills. Others sa

    Related Books & Audiobooks