Political fiction

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Contents 1 Classics 2 Science fiction 3 Notes 4 See also

Political fiction is a subgenre of fiction that deals with political affairs. Political fiction has often used narrative to provide commentary on political events, systems and theories. Works of political fiction often "directly criticize an existing society or... present an alternative, sometimes fantastic, reality." (1)

Prominent pieces of political fiction have included the anti-communist dystopias of the early 20th century. Equally influential, if not more so, however, have been earlier pieces of political fiction such as Gulliver's Travels (1726), Candide (1759) and Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).

[edit] Classics

• The Republic (ca. 360 BCE) by Plato

• Panchatantra (ca. 200 BCE) by Vishnu Sarma

• Utopia (1516) by Thomas More

• Don Quixote (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes
• Simplicissimus (1668) by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
• The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) by John Bunyan

• Persian Letters (1721) by Montesquieu
• Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift
• Candide (1759) by Voltaire
• Fables and Parables (1779) by Ignacy Krasicki

• Barnaby Rudge (1841) by Charles Dickens
• The Betrothed (1842) by Alessandro Manzoni
• Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• The Palliser novels (1864–1879) by Anthony Trollope
• War and Peace (1869) by Leo Tolstoy
• Thus Spake Zarathustra (1887) by Friedrich Nietzsche
• Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy
• Pharaoh (1895) by Bolesław Prus

• Nostromo (1904) by Joseph Conrad
• Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
• The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma (1932) by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz
• Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (1945) by George Orwell
• All the King's Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren
• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell
• Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand
• The Manchurian Candidate (1959) by Richard Condon
• Advise and Consent (1959) by Allen Drury
• Seven Days in May (1962) by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey
• Primary Colors (1996) by Joe Klein (as "Anonymous")

[edit] Science fiction

• The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula Le Guin
• The Mars trilogy (1990s) by Kim Stanley Robinson

[edit] Notes

1. "HIST 294 - Political Fiction", December 12, 2005

[edit] See also

• Utopian and dystopian fiction
• Social science fiction
• Politics in fiction
• Assassinations in fiction