“I was trying to see into the modern chaos”.
In 2023, Irish writer Paul Lynch was interviewed about his novel Prophet Song after winning the Booker Prize. The first half of the interview focused on his writing practice, almost cautiously hovering at a superficial level, before he was abruptly posed with the question, “was it inspired by any real-world events?” His response: “modern chaos”. Though set in a dystopian Ireland, Lynch incorporates a “high degree of realism” in the familiar characters and setting. A suburban home with a picket fence; the gossip mill of a tight-knit neighbourhood; teenage self-discovery and rebellion. However, the unsettling relevance of the novel is more than its aesthetic. The inefficient processing of migrants; the anxiety of technological panopticism; the subtle and slow creep of military power. The novel’s issues are immediate.
Regarding the current resurgence of dystopian sci-fi fiction, particularly after the release of Suzanne Collins’s Sunrise at the Reaping, there is a clear spectrum of immediacy in dystopian worlds. On one end, exemplified by Lynch, there is a deep sense of ‘this could be us’. The process of reading is like peering into the near future. On the other hand, we see high modernist and radical utopian projects under extreme governmental control, violent and unassailable authoritarianism. Often ending in a successful revolution, these worlds are categorised as firmly fictional.
In its most common use (think, sections in a bookstore, tier lists on BookTube), the dystopian genre is typically characterised by technological advances, surveillance, a post-conflict society, and the illusion of a utopian socialist state. Its academic and political origins diverge slightly from this specific representation. In his 1868 parliamentary speech, John Stuart Mill coined the term ‘dystopia’, intending to criticise the impracticality and naivety of the English government’s Irish land policy. Its literal etymology, ‘bad place’, and the influence of Thomas More’s concept of utopia have political roots.
A dystopian state is one with impractical and fallible policies, and a disregard for its civilians. Interestingly, Mill also mentions the term ‘cacotopia’, meaning the worst possible place. (One wonders, if it had been as catchy a word as dystopia, whether that would be the genre lining teenage bookshelves…) However, in the 20th century the genre gradually became defined by an oppressive state acting under the pretence of utopia. Usually, the plot culminates in the shattering of this grand illusion or the attempt to dethrone this government — the best kind of novelistic climax.
The lack of subtlety that most dystopian stories have is their most detrimental characteristic. Defining a dystopian state as such an aesthetic category fails to convey the urgency of current injustice and oppression. Though these worlds share similarities with the surveillance and systemic inequality of our own societies, they still seem fictional — a distant future, an extreme. It is hard not to notice how people obsessively consume Hunger Games media, excited for the premise of another year’s games, as if members of the Capitol itself. It’s ironic and funny at times, but ultimately unhelpful in a time where people willingly remain ignorant of current political and social issues.
I was feeling a little demoralised until I borrowed this random Irish book from a friend. Prophet Song’s narrative of a family escaping military authoritarianism was not unfamiliar. It made me rethink what technically constituted a dystopia. And then, while that was still floating in the back of my mind, I happened to buy an unassuming novel from a second hand book fair. The blurb of It Would be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo described a “real-life dystopia”. Like Lynch, Borgo describes a mundane character, one of many trying to flee an unstable and violent reality. The political dynamics of the fictional Venezuelan conflict are never really clarified, but it doesn’t need to be. At the heart of the novel, it is about a person going to desperate measures to survive. To escape. That’s where the novels converge.
‘Modern chaos’ is funnelled into the lives of these mundane and relatable characters that are changed irreparably. There is no exceptional sense of being the ‘chosen one’ or leading the revolution, roles easily consigned to other people. Instead, readers are confronted with the present issue of refugees needing sufficient funds or familial connections to flee. Right now, many Palestinians primarily rely on crowdfunding to escape the bombed and decimated living conditions of Gaza. There seems to be no other way. More than exposing our own complicity, these novels demonstrate how quickly a situation can flip and destroy all that we know.
If dystopian fiction is supposed to act as a warning or a call to action, the genre should move to incorporating this ‘high degree of realism’. Because in many ways, we already live in a dystopia — we just need to recognise it.
