The only one of these novels not set in a fictional dystopia is James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, an incredibly experimental work that vaguely follows various characters through a dreamlike, nebulous plot.

Only Zadie Smith’s White Teeth has not won the Booker Prize. Anne Enright’s The Gathering won in 2007, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries won in 2013, Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North won in 2014, and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss won in 2006.

Orwell’s famous Animal Farm uses pigs, horses, dogs, and other animals to allegorize the 1917 Russian Revolution and subsequent rise of communism. In the novel, specific animals such as Napoleon and Snowball stand in for major political figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky.

Considered one of the best works of English historical fiction in the last century, Mantel’s trilogy is set during the English Reformation and follows the rise of the Church of England and the machinations of historical characters such as Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry VIII.

The novel, written by Virginia Woolf in 1927, is a classic example of modernist stream-of-consciousness. Although the plot centers around a family’s vacations to a Scottish island, it is much more concerned with consciousness, emotions, and perceptions than with fast-paced action or plot.

This author is Salman Rushdie, whose other works include Midnight’s Children and The Moor's Last Sigh. Rushdie’s work is known for its frequent use of magical realism, Indian settings, and historical subject matter. In 1989, Iran called for Rushdie’s assassination in response to the author’s portrayal of Islam in his writing.

Burgess’ dystopian novel concerns a troubled teenage boy who speaks in a distinctive fictional slang (Nadsat) and perpetrates violent crimes in his society. This character, Alex, is later imprisoned and punished through the use of movies and aversive conditioning. Love and religion do not play important roles in the novel.

Set in the fictional and futuristic World State dictatorship, Huxley’s novel is darkly dystopian and concerns a society where natural reproduction no longer occurs. Instead, babies are grown in scientific labs and separated into artificial castes, where they are conditioned and raised to have only a certain level of intelligence. The novel centers on the relationship between two characters, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx, and the various ways in which they defy societal expectations and rules. The only subject not covered in this novel is gender identity.

The author is Pat Barker, and the novels are Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road. The works concern the lives and mental illnesses of several English soldiers (including Sassoon and Owen) in a psychiatric hospital during World War I.

Angela Carter was well known for her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and plays, but one of her best known works of fiction is The Bloody Chamber, a short story collection that presents familiar fairy tales with an unfamiliar (and often feminist) twist.