Past is Prologue: Take 5 Historical Fictions for Dystopia Fans

Evil governmental oppressors, secrets, spies and deception, a roiling underclass yearning to break out of bondage and one true hero who finds the way to do it – this is the stuff we love in our dystopian novels. But these are not only features in dystopia. We can look to history for plenty of examples of unjust governments, evil regimes, oppressed people seeking freedom, and plenty of heroes.  Below are five novels drawn on events, attitudes, and situations from the past that were all too real, and also employ many of the same appeal elements as dystopian novels. 

Dancer Daughter Traitor Spy by Elizabeth Kiem

Marina is born of privilege. Her mother, Sveta, is the Soviet Union’s prima ballerina: an international star handpicked by the regime. But Sveta is afflicted with a mysterious second sight and becomes obsessed with exposing a horrific state secret. Then she disappears. 

Fearing for their lives, Marina and her father defect to Brooklyn. Marina struggles to reestablish herself as a dancer at Juilliard. But her enigmatic partner, Sergei, makes concentration almost impossible, as does the fact that Marina shares her mother’s “gift,” and has a vision of her father’s murder at the hands of the Russian crooks and con artists she thought they’d left behind.  

Now Marina must navigate the web of intrigue surrounding her mother’s disappearance, her ability, and exactly whom she can—and can’t—trust.

Soldier X by Don Wulffson

Sixteen-year-old Erik Brandt barely knows what Germany is fighting for when he is drafted into Hitler’s army in 1944. Sent to the killing fields of the Eastern Front, he is surrounded by unimaginable sights, more horrific than he ever thought possible. It’s kill or be killed, and it seems clear that Erik’s days are numbered. Until, covered in blood and seriously injured, he conceives of another way to survive. Filled with gritty and visceral detail, Soldier X will change the way every reader thinks about the reality of war.

The Extra by Kathryn Lasky

One ordinary afternoon, fifeen-year-old Lilo and her family are suddenly picked up by Hitler’s police and imprisoned as part of the “Gypsy plague.” Just when it seems certain that they will be headed to a labor camp, Lilo is chosen by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to work as a film extra. Life on the film set is a bizarre alternate reality. The surroundings are glamorous, but Lilo and the other extras are barely fed, closely guarded, and kept in a locked barn when not on the movie set. And the beautiful, charming Riefenstahl is always present, answering the slightest provocation with malice, flaunting the power to assign prisoners to life or death. Lilo takes matters into her own hands, effecting an escape and running for her life. In this chilling but ultimately uplifting novel, Kathryn Lasky imagines the lives of the Gypsies who worked as extras for the real Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, giving readers a story of survival unlike any other.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson

Sekret by Lindsay Smith

Filed under: Book Lists, Dystopian, Historical fiction, Take 5