Books apocalyptic fiction Five Novels About Coming of Age During the Apocalypse Growing up is hard enough without the entire world falling apart around you. By James Davis Nicoll | Published on October 15, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Coming-of-age novels have long been popular. And why not? Not only do they offer younger readers protagonists with whom they can easily identify, coming-of-age stories offer the writer a wonderful opportunity to depict character at an especially meaningful moment of the character’s life. And what provides the perfect backdrop against which to develop character? Adversity! Therefore, it stands to reason the more adversity, the better. It’s no surprise that apocalyptic coming-of-age novels are hardly rare. Surviving1 as the world burns marvellously illuminates who one truly is. Here are five works about growing up in an apocalypse. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (1955) The Tribulation transformed most of North America into seared wastelands populated, if they were populated at all, by mutants… but not Labrador. Labrador’s inhabitants take survival as a sign of God’s favour, a favour that must be forever earned. Virtue must be rewarded and sin punished. Among the transgressions for which authorities are most vigilant: mutation. Any animal that is deformed is killed; any mutated child is sterilized and exiled. Too bad for telepath David and his equally telepathic chums. Telepathy is just the sort of trait that gets one exiled and it only takes one careless slip for the entire group to be exposed. Flight would be prudent… if only the Tribulation had left anywhere to which they could flee. Rereading this Wyndham for the first time in decades, I was struck by a curious detail I’d overlooked as a teen. Most of the novel is about how unjust and wrong prejudice is. There’s a sudden swerve at the end, in which David’s latest allies calmly explain that not only is prejudice called for in some circumstances, so is genocide. I’ve always wondered, were readers expected to take that at face value? Or was Wyndham revealing that David’s allies were no better than the Labradorians? Brother in the Land by Robert Swindells (1984) Sheltering in a disused bunker to avoid a sudden downpour, teenager Danny Lodge inadvertently escapes from the immediate effects of a Soviet nuclear attack on Branford. Danny’s family is almost as lucky; hometown Skipley is far enough from Branford that only Danny’s mother dies during the attack. Not only do the Lodges, minus mom, manage to survive almost unharmed save for PTSD, but the Lodge family store survived… well, not intact, but salvageable. Therefore, the Lodges can easily hold out until the British government restores normalcy. This sensible plan has only two flaws: the accumulating effects of acute radiation sickness from the lingering fallout, and the fact the remnants of the British government, the Local Commission, sees the Lodge family as impediments to be removed. In the Local Commission’s defense, it is not clear that Great Britain is habitable, due to the general destruction, the irradiated cropland, and all the other fun effects of having several hundred megatons dropped on a small island. However, the Local Commission appears to go out of its way to maximize misery as it tries to salvage something from the ruins. Malice or just middle-management promoted beyond their competence? Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack (1993) Twelve-year-old Lola Hart lives with her family in the sort of upper-class bliss only New York can offer. True, her father’s scriptwriting career runs hot-and-cold, but as long as Lola’s mother keeps her academic position, the Harts will be fine. It would take calamitous political chaos and a general economic collapse to push the Harts out of their comfortable niche. Calamitous political chaos and a general economic collapse force the Harts to embrace diminished expectations. Neither Mr. or Mrs. Hart truly grasp how radically their world has changed, or that the old order is never coming back. Lola is a realist. The tween understands the new reality and is determined to do whatever it takes to be one of the survivors. Readers looking for a feel-good coming-of-age novel should seek out this Womack—once they’ve read it, they will have a far clearer grasp of feel-good’s antithesis. You cannot look for something until you understand what it isn’t. The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe (2012) Sixteen-year-old Kaelyn’s homophobic father reacted badly to the revelation that his son Drew is gay, moving the family to a small island, far from Drew’s Toronto boyfriend. By pure coincidence, this means that when a novel disease breaks out, Kaelyn and her family are in an ideal place to wait out the pandemic… if only the outbreak were on the mainland and not on the island itself. The new disease is highly infectious. It is also phenomenally lethal. Prudence says to flee the island, which is why the mainlanders make a point of hulling every boat they can find. Therefore, Kaelyn and her rapidly dwindling circle of family and friends can only do their best to survive with whatever was on hand when the island was isolated. Or, as seems more likely, struggle futilely before perishing. I know it strains credibility that Canada’s single-payer health system would react to a novel virus with anything short of peerless, efficient professionalism from the loftiest federal office down to the humblest rural clinic. Accept the novel’s premise as akin to faster-than-light travel or telepathy—an implausible element needed to make the story work. War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi (2019) The Western powers have gifted the world with nuclear war and rapid climate change. Having transformed Earth, the West scattered glittering space stations across the Solar System and decamped en masse for the stars (or at least interplanetary space). As for Earth, no doubt its remaining occupants will straighten things out. Nigeria borders the new uninhabitable zone and is itself fractured along ethnic lines, the Igbo against the rest of Nigeria. Onyii is still young but she’s already a cybernetically-enhanced veteran. This may give her the skills she needs to rescue her adopted sister Ify from Nigerian kidnappers…but not before the Nigerians turn Ify into a weapon pointed at Onyii. Some readers may think that War Girls is just mainly a civil war novel, a Gundam-influenced reprise of the Biafran War of 1967–1970. How apocalyptic could a civil war possibly be? You really don’t want to gain personal experience with the answer to that question, so let’s just say that civil war has been, and will always be, sufficiently apocalyptic. Since many authors begin the writing process considering how best to motivationally immiserate their protagonists, it’s no surprise that so many subgenres, including coming-of-age works, feature apocalypses. These works are just five out of many. I am sure to have omitted some of your favourites—you may wish to mention them in the comments below.[end-mark] Some characters may choose not to survive, given the horrifically unpleasant choices they face. I recall that a number of characters in Battle Royale decided not to survive on the terms offered. ︎The post Five Novels About Coming of Age During the Apocalypse appeared first on Reactor.