Epätoivon kaupungit ja perirealistinen dystopia

During the last decades, dystopic visions have become very popular, especially in the literature and movies targeted to teenagers. The genre offers many interesting works of art also for more mature taste. Two important novels from the year 2009, Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood and Ahmed Khaled Towfik’s Utopia, are describing the failure of the city in the near future. In both books two types of urban settlement exist in the same area, one for the rich and the other for the poor. They are dependent on each other, even if a protective wall – both concrete, societal and economic – is built to separate their inhabitants. I examine them especially from the point of view of inequality. I also suggest that the books represent a formerly undefined subgenre of speculative fiction, perirealistic dystopia. It is a fact-based narrative situated in the near future and intended to improve the current societal development by presenting exaggerated dystopic visions. I call this desire as the principle of no-hope.