Dystopian books fly off the shelves following Trump’s re-election

Dystopian books have been flying off the shelves since Donald Trump was re-elected as the next US president. Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic “The Handmaid’s Tale” has shot up the bestseller charts alongside multiple other titles with similarly bleak forecasts for the state of the world.

In the two days since Trump’s re-election, “The Handmaid’s Tale” has surged in sales moving up 400 places in the US Amazon best sellers chart to the third most popular book. Atwood’s novel saw similar popularity during Trump’s first term.

Atwood’s novel was released in 1985 and was nominated for the Booker Prize. It has since remained popular. A TV series adaptation starring Elisabeth Moss first airing in 2017 has won two Golden Globes and five Primetime Emmys.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is set in a near-future New England details a patriarchal society that has stripped women of their agency through limiting their reproduction rights under the guise of Christian morals.

Its themes have clearly struck a chord with critics of Trump’s election platform, which prioritised restricting abortion rights, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Other dystopian novels have also seen increased popularity in the past few days.

George Orwell’s “1984” about a vision of Britain under a totalitarian dictatorship that controls the public through mass surveillance and media propaganda has risen in the charts.

“1984” sits high in the Amazon top 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 country who is forced to incinerate books and other sources of information that the government wants censored.

It’s not just fiction that is rising in the charts though.

Timothy Snyder’s history book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” has also re-charted. Snyder released the book in 2017 during Trump’s first term to popular acclaim and charts his concerns for “America’s turn towards authoritarianism”.

On the other side of the political spectrum, pro-Trump books have seen a resurgence in the charts.

Former first lady Melania Trump’s memoir “Melania” was at the top of the Amazon list, and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” was in the top 10. Donald Trump’s photo book “Save America” was in the top 30.

“Fiction and non-fiction books that feature fascism, feminism, dystopian worlds and both right-and-left leaning politics rocketed up our sales charts with the election results,” Shannon DeVito, Barnes & Noble’s director of books, said. She cited “Melania”, “On Tyranny” and Bob Woodward’s latest, “War”, which covers the responses of Trump and President Joe Biden to the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.