Can someone please name me some good books about fascist gov.t?

Hey,

I'm working on writing a dystopia novel right now. It deals with things like governmental camera spying, Internet shutdown, inability to travel from state to state, and the like.

I've read the obvious ones, like 1984. I've also read lots of dystopian books that have different focuses with regards to what makes the society so bad.

If anyone can recommend some fascism dystopia books for me, that'd be greatly appreciated. (Esp since I'm at my campus library right now) I"m trying to get the hang of what writing techniques, setting description methods etc work best for those types of stories (NOT trying to rip off ideas, as I already have a plot)

Thanks a ton!

 

Well, you can read V for Vendetta, but it isn't a novel; it is a graphic novel.

 

Thanks. I've seen the movie and liked it a lot.

 

While not exactly focusing on fascism, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Dispossessed is a particularly good bit of science fiction comparing a communist society with a capitalist society. She does a good job of not really taking a side in her depiction.

 

Thanks! I just may check it out, but my novel I'm writing doesn't talk about economics much--it's more about what happens when an administration decides not to give a you-know-what about civil liberties.

 

Anything by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

 

You mean LeGuin.

Try Zamyatin's We, which is a classic that doesn't get read often enough, and Ira Levin's This Perfect Day, which is an interesting spin on a dystopia (although its fascism is a bit more subtle.) For something fantasy-oriented, Fritz Leiber's Gather, Darkness! is an interesting dystopia set in a quasi-"Puritan" setting.

I'll also second Solzhenitsyn for real-world dystopia, although it's not fascist per se.

 

Although it's really more just a background to the story itself, there's Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

 

I would recommend The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, both by Suzanne Collins. They're more focused on the fight-to-the-death battle, but some aspects of life under the rule of a fascist authority is there. Also, have you read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood? That is one of the most famous dystopian tales involving a fascist theocracy, although it's not a modern story, so no camera spying and Internet control.

 

While not a dystopian novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao deals extensively with life under fascist rule in the DR, and in a way that is very original and inventive. It's also a superbly written book (Pulitzer Prize winning), and you're sure to find inspiration of some sort in it. It's also quite humorous, despite the subject, which might make it a nice change from some of the incredibly dense and dark (though, of course, very good) books listed above.

 

Wow guys, thank you all SO MUCH!!!

Yes, I've read The Handmaid's Tale. Being that I'm the feminist career-woman type, it jarred me a bit. I've also heard parts of The Hunger Games on tape, and am familiar with what it's about.

The rest I haven't heard of (Vaguely heard of We, but not in detail).

I will definitely check them out at the library tomorrow.

 

Even though they don't talk about government directly, you might want to look at some Holocaust books, like Elie Wiesel's Night (even if you've already read it). This will help you to see the true power of fear and dehumanization, which is what fascists rely upon to maintain power. 1984 is such a terrifying and powerful book because it manages to capture these things and apply them so well.

 

Paxton is the man I consider the expert on Fascism. Robert O. Paxton author of French Peasant Fascism(1997) and Anatomy of Fascism (2004).

The Vichy regime might be a good place to look at how fascism works when it takes over from a non-fascist regime: lots of sports for youth, lots of family values, lots of secret files, lots of militias, lots of people getting assassinated.

 

its a non fiction book but the Italians and the Holocaust is really good.

 

The same thing applies for many military juntas; although they aren't classically fascist in all instances, a lot of them do have fascist elements. Looking at midcentury/late 20th century history books on Southern Cone South America in particular couldn't hurt as well (The Dirty War/Operation CONDOR/other 'initiatives'). As an American, the tacit approval that the US government gave these juntas astounded me when I began my legal study abroad down there.

 

The Audacity of Hope?

 

Paxton, in his Anatomy of Fascism notes that some regimes that are not classic fascist regimes (for example, Paxton suggests Nazi Germany had aspects that made it less classic than say Italy in terms of fitting the fascist model) may be even more obsessed with violence than classic fascist regimes.

Wikipedia's article on Paxton surmarizes Paxton's definition of fascism as follows:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

 

Do you mean the passage where Palin suggests national regeneration
via devotion to rogue Princesses?

Maybe that's in Game Change