How the literary world is uniting against a new era of Trump

This week saw Samantha Harvey announced as the winner of the Booker prize for fiction for her story about astronauts on the International Space Station, Orbital. Offering a fresh perspective on the world we share, it is “a book we need now”, according to judge Sara Collins, who wrote for us about how she and her fellow judges came to their decision.

It certainly feels a prescient win at a time when wars rage and the fight to save the planet is more urgent than ever – especially given that a climate denier is soon to become one of the world’s most important decision-makers. In this week’s newsletter, I look at the literary resistance that is already bubbling up. And actor and writer Harriet Walter shares her reading picks.

The election of Donald Trump as US president last week has been met with shock and despondency by many lovers and creators of literature. But the situation is “much too urgent and important for despair”, Katherine Rundell told the Guardian earlier this week.

In response to Trump’s win, she has vowed to donate all of the royalties from her book on endangered species, The Golden Mole (which came out in the US as Vanishing Treasures on Tuesday), to climate charities.

Rundell is not the only one trying to fight back against the changing political tide: staff at Hachette in the US have been taking action this week against the post-election announcement of a new conservative imprint. Basic Liberty is headed up by Thomas Spence, who has links to rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which coordinated Project 2025, an initiative setting out plans to reshape the US government and strip minorities of legal protections.

A letter opposing the new imprint from an anonymous group of Hachette employees was published on social media, while Alex DiFrancesco, a US-based editor at Jessica Kingsley Publishers, which is part of Hachette UK, has resigned over the issue.

On BookTok, the corner of TikTok devoted to all things literary, users have been discussing whether BookTok – and reading itself – should be treated as a political space. A large portion of the books discussed on the social media app are romance and fantasy reads that TikTok users turn to for escape or self-care – but that doesn’t mean that BookTokers should be ignoring politics, says BookToker Celine, who posts on TikTok as bookishwithb.

“Even if you are reading what you think is just a silly light fluffy romance, there is going to be something in there which is inherently a reflection of the society that we live in,” she said in a recent video captioned “literature has always been political”.

“And if it doesn’t have any political commentary it, at the very least, within you cultivates a form of empathy,” she went on to say. “Literature is essential to our development as human beings and our development as society, and if it wasn’t there would be no such thing as literature bans and the burning of libraries.”

Politically engaged BookTokers have been recommending The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel which has become something of a symbol for feminist and abortion rights protesters around the world. The novel – which is among the most banned books in the US according to PEN America – has seen a surge in sales since Trump’s win, with Nielsen BookScan reporting a 158% sales increase across three editions of the book in the UK.

Atwood herself encouraged her followers on X to stay engaged and not to give up the fight after the election result. “Despair is not an option,” she tweeted. “It helps no one.”

I have recently enjoyed Doppelganger by Naomi Klein: a miraculously lucid laying-out of what is really happening in the world via the dark web, the interested parties behind fake news and the human psyche. It is at once personal and universal, and not in any way hectoring.

Meanwhile, Philippa Gregory’s Normal Women is brilliantly researched and riveting;a vast story of how women of all kinds have participated in every sphere of our history. It is full of facts that I am ashamed not to have known.

And Precipice by Robert Harris is top-notch writing. The author builds the tension of the looming first world war alongside the passionate extramarital love affair between the prime minister Herbert Asquith and the much younger Venetia Stanley. Although much has changed for the better since those days, I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic for a relatively unsurveilled daily life, and for politicians who could quote Browning and Shakespeare and speak and write in beautifully wrought sentences.

• She Speaks by Harriet Walter is published by Little, Brown (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply