15 of the Best Post-Apocalyptic Books in 2020

Written before the pandemic, Leave The World Behind still manages to capture every emotion of the panic and uncertainty the world seems gripped in today. A tale of slow trust and isolation in a world where communication and technology is breaking down. Alam weaves a complex narrative around issues of race, parenthood, and an overreliance on technology that switches between the narratives of its characters and allows us to really see where they stand in the story, from their own perspectives.

Memory serves as our most important tool for keeping in touch with our past. But what happens when you can’t trust that memory anymore? Yogo Ogawa spins an unexpected tale in this post-apocalyptic fiction that seems far slower than others in the genre but has an impact that leaves you speechless.

When the Memory Police threaten to take away a young novelist’s editor because of his memory of forgotten things, she begins to question what it means to forget and why remembering is so dangerous. Eerily similar to the rise of authoritarianism our world is all too familiar with, Ogawa’s imagined future may not be all that far off.

Sutton’s new novel takes on a question few can debate and even fewer target head on: climate change. In a futuristic world destroyed by climate change and nuclear war, humanity lives in a world in the clouds. Acid rain is common, as are ocular Fitbits instead of eyeballs, and only criminals live on the wasteland that is now Earth. But David’s commitment to his job takes him undercover to the world where no human being would willingly go.

2028 may not be that far off (if we ever make it out of this pandemic), but Russell’s new world of surveillance and secret rebellion easily makes it one of the best post apocalyptic books of 2020. Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games or WE, Russell’s post-apocalyptic Seattle is full of secrets and tangled webs as the government seeks to destroy dissent, and in the process creates a new kind of Resistance.

Edge of Collapse is Kyla Stone’s first novella in a four-part post-apocalyptic book series and it starts with a bang, quite literally. When an EMP destroys all power in the country, it becomes the greatest day of Hannah Sheridan’s life: her escape.

But as her captor ruthlessly pursues her and all modern technology is lost to the power outage, Hannah and ex-soldier Liam have to navigate an unknown world to get back to the one they knew. The first book of the series merely introduces us to the characters and Stone’s unputdownable writing, and the other three only get more and more exciting.

Nick Storming may not have named the disease in his post-apocalyptic world COVID-19, but the fear of the world ending due to a deadly disease is one that readers this year can definitely relate to.

The only difference: the Man-Slayer Flu has killed off 99.99% of all men, and the few that remain are gripped with a desire to repopulate the world. Adam is the only man left on the west coast, and when he wakes up in a research hospital one day, he finds himself in a world with no governments, no order, and surrounded by a primal need he doesn’t quite understand.

Skyhunter is post-apocalyptic fantasy in every way, from the creation of mutant creatures as a military force to the rise of a dystopian government hellbent on controlling every nation in the world – with only Mara left to conquer. But it’s also a book that touches the heart of today’s reader. The protagonist is a young female refugee whose struggles with acceptance, identity, and home speak volumes about the impact of global wars on countless lives today.

Amidst the meaningful impact of the story is a fast-paced dystopian world descending into a war that will not end until one side breaks. Yet Lu still manages to provide complexity to even her villainous characters.