The prospect of 4 extra years of Trump has despatched readers again to their bookshelves to reacquaint themselves with the grim futures depicted in works by Margaret Atwood and George Orwell.
Dystopian books have been flying off the cabinets since Donald Trump was re-elected as the subsequent US president. Margaret Atwood’s dystopian traditional “The Handmaid’s Story” has shot up the bestseller charts alongside a number of different titles with equally bleak forecasts for the state of the world.
Within the two days since Trump’s re-election, “The Handmaid’s Story” has surged in gross sales shifting up 400 locations within the US Amazon greatest sellers chart to the third hottest e book. Atwood’s novel noticed related recognition throughout Trump’s first time period.
Atwood’s novel was launched in 1985 and was nominated for the Booker Prize. It has since remained well-liked. A TV sequence adaptation starring Elisabeth Moss first airing in 2017 has received two Golden Globes and 5 Primetime Emmys.
“The Handmaid’s Story” is ready in a near-future New England particulars a patriarchal society that has stripped ladies of their company via limiting their copy rights beneath the guise of Christian morals.
Its themes have clearly struck a chord with critics of Trump’s election platform, which prioritised proscribing abortion rights, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Different dystopian novels have additionally seen elevated recognition prior to now few days.
George Orwell’s “1984” a couple of imaginative and prescient of Britain beneath a totalitarian dictatorship that controls the general public via mass surveillance and media propaganda has risen within the charts.
“1984” sits excessive within the Amazon high 40 alongside Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451”. Named after the temperature that books burn at, Bradbury’s novel follows a fireman in a totalitarian nation who’s pressured to incinerate books and different sources of data that the federal government desires censored.
It’s not simply fiction that’s rising within the charts although.
Timothy Snyder’s historical past e book “On Tyranny: Twenty Classes from the Twentieth Century” has additionally re-charted. Snyder launched the e book in 2017 throughout Trump’s first time period to well-liked acclaim and charts his considerations for “America’s flip in the direction of authoritarianism”.
On the opposite facet of the political spectrum, pro-Trump books have seen a resurgence within the charts.
Former first girl Melania Trump’s memoir “Melania” was on the high of the Amazon checklist, and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” was within the high 10. Donald Trump’s picture e book “Save America” was within the high 30.
“Fiction and non-fiction books that characteristic fascism, feminism, dystopian worlds and each right-and-left leaning politics rocketed up our gross sales charts with the election outcomes,” Shannon DeVito, Barnes & Noble’s director of books, stated. She cited “Melania”, “On Tyranny” and Bob Woodward’s newest, “Warfare”, which covers the responses of Trump and President Joe Biden to the conflicts in Ukraine and the Center East.
