Brighter Days Ahead: Utopian Novels

Fleeing war-torn China, a small planeload of people is hijacked to an idyllic valley in the Himalayas where time has virtually stopped. There Conway, a British diplomat, falls in love with a beautiful woman, and is asked to remain in Shangri-La as its new leader.

The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BC, concerning the definition of justice and the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. It is Plato's best-known work and has proven to be one of the most intellectually and historically influential works of philosophy and political theory. In it, Socrates along with various Athenians and foreigners discuss the meaning of justice and examine whether or not the just...

Herland (1915) is a utopian novel by American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland was originally published in The Forerunner, a monthly magazine edited by Gilman, before going out of print for the next several decades. The novel was republished with an influential introduction by scholar Ann J. Lane in 1979 and has since been recognized as an important work of science fiction written by a leading feminist of the early twentieth century. A...

The lyrical and haunting story of a great American dream--the progress of a utopian community and its lasting impact on a gifted young man.

"A teenage girl living in 1960s China becomes Mao Zedong's protégée and lover--and a poster child for the Cultural Revolution--in this provocative, poignant novel from the bestselling author of A River of Stars On the eve of China's Cultural Revolution and her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished...

In a distant-future, highly advanced society of seemingly unlimited technological capability, a crime is committed within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one--maybe two--people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once...