Of course Cloud Atlas is not entirely a novel about the end of the world, and in fact of its six storylines only one could be considered post-apocalyptic (one other is squarely dystopian). Of course, there are plenty more great apocalypse and post-apocalypse novels that didn’t fit on this list, and I haven’t read enough books in translation in this genre, so as ever, please add on your own favorites in the comments. We could argue all day about what actually constitutes an “apocalypse”-2020 is checking a lot of boxes, as you may have noticed-so for the most part, I’ve gone with my gut. I’ve done my best to limit this list to books in which there is-or has been-some kind of literal apocalypse, excluding dystopias (like The Handmaid’s Tale) or simply bleak visions of the future. Humans have been pondering the end of existence for as long as we’ve been aware of it (probably, I mean, I wasn’t there), and as a result we have a rich collection of apocalypse and post-apocalypse literature to read during our planet’s senescence. After all, someone must survive to tell the tale.
The end of the world is never really the end of the world-at least not in fiction.
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