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Vegan Fiction: Standouts and Recommendations

Thank you for reading my vegan fiction posts. I'd love to hear more suggestions especially short stories and poems.

In The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis Jeremy Rifkin says Charles Darwin wrote "...of a coming age when humanity will stretch its social instincts and sympathetic impulses, 'becoming more tender and more widely diffused until they are extended to all sentient beings'." We're still working on it and fiction — reading, writing, and talking about it — has a part to play.

Here's a summary of some favorites and some recommendations:

Most heartbreakingThe Plague Dogs by Richard Adams
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Recommended listening
Never Let Me Go (2010) soundtrack by Rachel Portman
The Smiths Meat is Murder

Favorite work of vegan fiction
Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller

Best recommendation: overall
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Best recommendation: non-vegan
The Ethical Assassin by David Liss, dark comedy, thriller

Best recommendation: vegans
The Vegan Revolution...with Zombies by David Agranoff, comedy

Worst recommendation: non-vegan
Animals by Don LePan, horror

Best recommendation: people considering veganism for environmental reasons
MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood

Most memorable scenes
ChickieNobs in Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Rowf in the drowning tank in The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams
Boxer the workhorse goes to slaughter in Animal Farm by George Orwell
the pig farm in The Ethical Assassin by David Liss
the slaughter house in Animals by Don LePan

Favorite vegetarian protagonist in a book that did not make this list
Marian Leatherby, the crone in Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet, "I never eat meat as I think it is wrong to deprive animals of their life when they are so difficult to chew anyway."
Favorite quotes
"She makes a silent vow to be a vegetarian from now on even if she has to starve to do it. Better that than even the remote possibility of eating one's friends and fellow sufferers." — Pooch in Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller

“She tips back her head and howls: Moooooown! Oh wonderful moooooowwwwwyyyn!”
— Pooch in Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller
Not on this list, because I haven't read them...yet!Animal Man Omnibus (2013) by Grant Morrison
Liberator (four-part comic series) (2013) by Matt Miner
That's Why We Don't Eat Animals, Vegan is Love, and V is for Vegan by Ruby Roth

Non-fiction reads mentioned as part of this list
Animal Liberation, Peter Singer (1975)
Victims of Science, Richard Ryder (1983)
The China Study, T. Colin Campbell (2006)
Farm Sanctuary, Gene Baur (2008) See review.
The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin (2010) See review.
The Better Angels of our Nature, Steven Pinker (2011) See review.
Whole, T. Colin Campbell (2013) See review.
Inspired? Help here
Beagle Freedom Project
Pigs Peace Sanctuary
Chimpanzee Sanctuary NW
Farm Sanctuary

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