Best climate change fiction books, from The Overstory to Flight Behaviour – but why aren’t there more?
- Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island is the latest novel in which climate change is already having drastic effects on people’s lives
- There are several very good ‘cli-fi’ novels out there, but the number pales into insignificance given the massive scale of the problem
In his collection of essays that make up The Great Derangement (2016), author Amitav Ghosh investigates why fiction writers have remained largely silent about climate change despite the damning evidence.
There are books – and very good ones – written about the topic, but compared to the massive scale and far-reaching implications of the problem, the number is dwarfed into insignificance.
But perhaps this enormity is partly to blame: writers, artists and thinkers are struggling to find the concepts and ideas to engage with the unprecedented events of this new era.
This is starting to change, however. Ghosh’s new novel, Gun Island , is the latest attempt to imaginatively engage with a world in which climate change is already having drastic effects on people’s lives.
The book comes hot on the heels of Richard Powers’ The Overstory, which was published last year. This magnificent novel is about trees, and it charts – with scientific precision – the interconnectedness of their lives.