All too often, life can feel like a dystopian novel. Endless wars engulfing the Middle East, a semi-zombified population glued to their Twitter feeds, a creeping state surveillance . . . you know the drill.

But it’s one thing to say that life feels like a generic dystopia, and another entirely to buy a specific book and find the horrors of our modern world described perfectly by someone who has been dead for 20 years.

Whether you’re a liberal or a conservative, here you’ll find 10 novels from 10 authors which, taken together, explain all you need to know about the malaise afflicting modern America. The books are ranked from the merely good (#10) to the jaw-droppingly prescient (#1).