Michaela Coel

Originally published in China in 2006, but now translated into English, this took me about eight months to read because I had to keep going back. It’s a book that I struggle to explain—it flashes back and forth in time over a million years and across solar systems—but it totally helped me escape this planet. It’s not offering a utopian vision—the future it imagines is fucking terrifying—but it’s so rooted in science that it’s all very plausible. If I can read this book and get it, while also being completely gripped, anyone can.