Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)

Never Let Me Go is the most emotionally devastating literary novel of the century, using a science-fictional conceit—clones raised for organ donation in near-future England—to explore memory and compliance with oppression. The novel's quiet horror lies in its clones, who rarely live past age 30, accepting their fate with heartbreaking passivity—a question about how people comply when the alternative is hope.