{"id":73969,"date":"2025-08-16T11:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T11:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/73969\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T11:27:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T11:27:10","slug":"look-up-five-hopeful-novels-about-the-climate-crisis-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/73969\/","title":{"rendered":"Look up: five hopeful novels about the climate crisis | Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Can literature be a tool to encourage something better \u2013 creating eco-topia on the page, so it might be imagined off it?\u201d asks the novelist Sarah Hall in this weekend\u2019s Guardian magazine<\/a>. Climate fiction \u2013 or \u201ccli-fi\u201d \u2013 continues to grow as a genre in its own right; the first Climate fiction prize<\/a> was awarded this year. And while the roots of environmental fiction are in apocalypse and despair, these five writers are moving beyond dystopia to hopeful possibilities.<\/p>\n

Photograph: Daunt Books<\/p>\n

Powers was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer for this love letter to the arboreal world. Mimicking the interlinked canopy and undergrowth of the forest, he weaves the stories of nine core characters whose lives are deeply connected to trees. Olivia and Nick, for example, set up camp in a giant redwood for a year to prevent it from being cut down. They connect with other characters over their environmental activism, with one tragic consequence. But ultimately the novel is a homage to the resilience of humans and trees.<\/p>\n

Globetrotting tales \u2026 Amitav Ghosh. Photograph: Mathieu Ge\u0301non<\/p>\n

In Ghosh\u2019s globetrotting novel inspired by Bengali legends, environmental destruction surfaces again and again: climate change-induced migration, wildfires, beached dolphins. This is no dystopia, but climate realism. Yet the novel feels fundamentally hopeful, with Ghosh nodding to cross-cultural cooperation as a means of facing climate destruction. Two female characters, marine biologist Piya and historian Cinta, also fortify us. \u201cI don\u2019t think my book is climate fiction at all,\u201d said Ghosh in a 2019 interview. \u201cIt\u2019s actually a reality that in hard circumstances humans often discover joy and faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in 1993, Parable of the Sower is set between 2024 and 2027 in a California bordering on anarchy, marked by economic breakdown and climate change. The narrator, Lauren Olamina, suffers from hyperempathy syndrome, meaning she feels the pain of others acutely. She creates a new religion, Earthseed, which posits that humans have the power to \u201cshape God\u201d and enact change. Verses from Earthseed\u2019s book of scripture are scattered throughout the novel: \u201cBelief initiates and guides action \u2013 or it does nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Butterflies in mind \u2026 Barbara Kingsolver. Photograph: Shawn Poynter<\/p>\n

Escaping an unhappy marriage on a failing Appalachian farm, Dellarobia is en route to meet her would-be lover when she is stopped in her tracks by a sea of orange monarch butterflies, set off their migratory course by climate change. Dellarobia\u2019s discovery draws an entomologist to the area, and with his help she undergoes a metamorphosis of her own.<\/p>\n

This slim novel, published in 2021, is set on a utopian moon, Panga, following a destructive \u201cFactory Age\u201d. Humanity has since deindustrialised, transitioning to agrarian, sustainable living. Our protagonist, non-binary tea monk Dex, travels between Panga\u2019s villages in their wagon, offering personalised brews and a listening ear to troubled residents. But soon, Dex craves quiet, and journeys into the wilderness, where they strike up a friendship with a robot, Splendid Speckled Mosscap, who is looking to answer the question: \u201cWhat do humans need?\u201d This cosy novella slots into the \u201chopepunk\u201d subgenre of speculative fiction for its optimistic exploration of life\u2019s meaning and humanity\u2019s relationship to nature and technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Can literature be a tool to encourage something better \u2013 creating eco-topia on the page, so it might…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-73969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}