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Books like The Past Is Red
22 connected reads, with a reason for every recommendation.
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8 reading possibilities- 01
A mother and daughter navigate a damaged world in this formally inventive, sharply observed novel about survival and the cost of belonging.
- 02
Its spare, poetic account of a family displaced by flooding offers an intimate counterpart to speculative fiction shaped by ecological catastrophe.
- 03
A resourceful narrator’s account of life after a pandemic pairs grim survival with a pointed examination of gender and power.
- 04
In a drought-stricken future Southwest, a fast-moving struggle over water combines environmental collapse with social satire.
- 05
This first novel in Robinson’s Three Californias sequence follows a coastal community rebuilding after catastrophe with a reflective, place-centered focus.
- 06
A young woman’s journey through a fracturing near-future America makes this a powerful match for fiction that faces catastrophe without losing sight of human invention.
- 07
Atwood’s first MaddAddam novel blends a devastated future with dark humor and a critique of corporate and scientific hubris.
- 08
After a pandemic, interconnected lives and a traveling theater company give this literary apocalypse novel a humane, art-loving perspective.
Explore 14 more recommendations
- 09
A young woman’s account of life aboard a refuge ship turns a ruined world into a tense study of privilege, memory, and confinement.
- 10
A woman isolated behind an inexplicable barrier records the routines of survival in a quietly unsettling classic of speculative fiction.
- 11
In a future where water is scarce and controlled, a young tea master’s secret inheritance anchors this lyrical ecological dystopia.
- 12
In a world where people lose their shadows and memories, this imaginative quest connects intimate emotion with uncanny large-scale transformation.
- 13
A pilot’s search for connection after a flu pandemic gives this spare survival story a contemplative, nature-attuned voice.
- 14
Its desert-crossing tale of drought, myth, and desire brings a dreamlike literary sensibility to environmental collapse.
- 15
As extreme cold transforms a near-future Britain, this moving, idiosyncratic novel finds connection amid a changing climate.
- 16
A woman recounts rebellion against an authoritarian state in this compressed, unsettling vision of a resource-strained future.
- 17
Set in a future shaped by ecological ruin and corporate control, this dense, idea-rich novel offers a more intricate companion to climate-driven dystopias.
- 18
This near-future story imagines people abandoning a failing society to build alternatives, mixing speculative invention with an irreverent social critique.
- 19
The first Broken Earth novel makes recurring planetary catastrophe the foundation for a bold story about power, survival, and community.
- 20
A missionary on another planet faces growing distance from Earth in this thoughtful, voice-focused novel of faith and estrangement.
- 21
A quest for an elusive book turns literary curiosity into a sly, strange adventure for readers drawn to unconventional speculative detours.
- 22
An unexpected connectionThis fragmentary account of human and humanoid workers aboard a spacecraft offers a formally adventurous bridge to fiction that lets voice and strangeness lead.
About the book
The Past Is Red is a 2021 book by Catherynne M. Valente; its listed subject is American literature.
About the author
Catherynne M. Valente is an American author known for imaginative speculative fiction and distinctive, lyrical prose.