Not a good place – dystopian fiction creates a vision of an alternative and undesirable community. It imagines a world, where human nature and its weaknesses dominate and create an environment of fear, threat, and destruction. Taking a closer look at contemporary American fiction, the desire to display alternative and warning visions of communal life and human existence can be detected in a wide variety of novels, e.g. in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy (2008-2010), in Veronica Roth’s Divergent (2011), and David Eggers’ The Circle (2013) – just to name a few of those dystopian novels enjoying an immense success in their literary form and cinematic adaptation as well. With this seminar we will take a closer look at some of these contemporary dystopian works by American authors, explore the world they create and investigate the purpose of the depiction of an unwanted and hazardous, imaginative community.
