Cover image of "Fragile," a realistic dystopian novel

Welcome to the no-longer-United States of America. Half of Florida lies underwater, and the West Coast is burning and choked with smoke. “Where JFK Airport’s big pool of light used to be, broken terminals and flooded runways” lie hidden in the heat. It’s now a permanent evacuation zone, a prime result of “the epic disaster of Hurricane Shelby that had washed it all away.” In the inner boroughs, temperatures rarely dip below 100 degrees Fahrenheit. There, the Global Supply Crisis of the early 2050s has given rise to SAFE, the Special Agency for Essentials, to secure life-saving pharmaceuticals from a shrinking list of suppliers worldwide. At SAFE, Dr. Jake Alvaro passes one sleepless night after another chasing the antibiotics and other drugs New Yorkers need to survive. It’s a thankless and probably futile task. This is the set-up in Alexa Weik von Mossner’s realistic dystopian novel, Fragile.

A set-up for an unlikely romance amid the ruins

The book’s title may refer to the state of American society as the ravages of climate change make life steadily less livable. But the name of the story’s other protagonist, Shavir, also translates as “fragile” from the Hebrew. It reflects one of the strands in her complex, multiethnic heritage. Shavir is a member of Roots, an urban farming collective that raises copious quantities of vegetables on three linked rooftops in Brooklyn.

By night, however, Shavir and some of her colleagues raid illegal facilities across Brooklyn and Queens where crooks are fattening puppies for slaughter as meat. They are all fanatical animal-rights activists who equate the value of animals’ lives with those of humans. Shavir looks on the puppies they rescue as “friends who are blessed with much shorter lifespans.” And this sets up a fierce conflict between Shavir and Jake when eventually they meet and attempt to build a loving relationship.

Fragile by Alexa Weik von Mossner (2023) 330 pages ★★★★★

Map of the effect of rising seas on New York City as reflected in this realistic dystopian novel
Projection of the effect of huge storms and rising seas on the coast of New York City. Note the extensive flooding on southern Brooklyn and Queens, as portrayed in this novel. Image: Climate Central

Crisis piles on crisis as the storms worsen and New Yorkers grow more desperate for drugs

As Shavir and Jake grow closer, superstorms are wreaking havoc on his efforts to secure antibiotics and other essential drugs for New York City. First, a supertyphoon prevents a huge shipment of drugs from leaving Cambodia. Then, eventually moving the drugs at great cost to Hong Kong, Jake finds that yet another typhoon has closed off shipping from that port, too.

Meanwhile, his boss, David, has become addicted to a popular mood-altering drug called Emovia, and his life is coming apart at the seams. Jake is already grossly overworked but now must take on new responsibilities as well. And all the time he has begun to learn about Shavir’s illegal nightlife, which threatens her with a lifetime sentence to prison, or worse. At the same time, the supply of drugs in the city continues to shrink, placing them out of reach of huge numbers of New Yorkers. And now, in what’s left of Brooklyn and Queens, riots are beginning to break out. New York’s future looks bleak, indeed.

How realistic is this novel?

Fragile takes its place among a growing body of novels that portray the effects of climate change. But most focus exclusively on one aspect of the phenomenon, such as the rising level of the seas. By contrast, Von Mossner envisions the impact of several foreseeable consequences of global warming. Not just the rising waters, which have occasioned the construction of huge sea walls protecting the island of Manhattan. But the much increased frequency of superstorms and forest fires. And she doesn’t stop there.

In Fragile, we view the consequences for global commerce, the loss of land previously given over to farming, the outbreak of epidemics as drugs become less available, and the increasing instability of government institutions. The only major aspect of climate change that’s missing here is the flood of climate refugees that is certain to follow the unsustainable rise in temperatures in so many regions of the world. And, given the author’s assumption about the high cost and shrinking availability of transportation across borders, it would be unrealistic to expect a continuing flood of refugees into the United States, given that the country is becoming unlivable, too.

About the author

Photo of Alexa Weik von Mossner, author of this realistic dystopian novel
Alexa Weik von Mossner in 2017. Image: University of Klagenfurt

Alexa Weik von Mossner is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria. She holds a PhD in Literature from the University of California, San Diego. Von Mossner is a film scholar and has written more than 100 episodes for a drama series on German television. Fragile is her first novel, although she has also written four nonfiction books, mostly about ecology.

You’ll find this novel at The top 10 dystopian novels.

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