4.10 avg rating — 218,252 ratings

"This groundbreaking 1969 literary classic depicts a society that lacks fixed genders, and, as a result, gender discrimination. Its influence on later representations of gender in all categories of fiction is comparable to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando."

3.73 avg rating — 2,552 ratings

"Newly translated and published last month, this debut work from Anne Garétta, one of the only female members of Oulipo, uses no gender markers to describe the relationship between two lovers."

4.18 avg rating — 13,638 ratings

"Much of Erdrich’s work subtly deconstructs accepted Western notions of gender, and The Last Report, with its figure of Father Damien Modeste, is arguably the most powerful instantiation of this theme in her novels."

3.97 avg rating — 599 ratings

"The Nobel winner Patrick White here tells the story of one soul that inhabits three different bodies — one male, the other two female — in the years before and after World War I."

3.57 avg rating — 37 ratings

"On New Year’s Eve of 1970, a supergroup of women’s liberation groups banded together to renovate an abandoned building in order to help clothe and shelter women in need. Less than two weeks later, the New York City police predictably and violently expelled the women from the building. One of the organizers, Arnold wrote this novel — which avoids gendered language — shortly after being released from prison."

3.90 avg rating — 34,492 ratings

"Firmly in the mode of The Left Hand of Darkness, Miéville’s excellent Embassytown continues its author’s exploration of the relation between gender and power. Narrated by the ungendered Avice, this novel looks at a society that seems to have transcended patriarchy."

3.87 avg rating — 114,077 ratings

"One of the most cited — certainly among the most influential — novels in gender and transgender studies, Woolf’s Orlando is the mind-blowing fictional biography of a poet named Orlando who changes gender at the age of 30 (and lives for hundreds of years)."

4.25 avg rating — 49,435 ratings

"It’s worth pointing out that Discworld series contained complex and evolving considerations of gender. Consider, if you will, the dwarves, whose gender identities are still being debated."

4.08 avg rating — 33,747 ratings

"This influential book, one of Winterson’s best, features a nameless, non-gendered narrator in a love affair with a married woman."

4.37 avg rating — 21,884 ratings

"This series of novels (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago) features the oankali, an alien race with three genders: male, female, and ooloi."

3.99 avg rating — 118,399 ratings

"One of the most revered science-fiction novels of the last several years, Leckie’s Ancillary Justice features the Radchaai, a race that does not distinguish gender identities, although the usage of female personal pronouns for everyone sometimes leads to confusion."

3.60 avg rating — 14,678 ratings

"Although not as transparently non-gendered as some of the other novels on this list, I would argue that Barnes’ Nightwood aggressively complicates gender representation, often through modernist experimentation, thereby changing what was possible concerning gender in the novel."

4.49 avg rating — 543 ratings

"A fascinating collection of books that consider anarchism, post-scarcity, and gender, among many other things. In particular, gendered language in the Culture series is linked to the relative entrenchment of patriarchal structures within a given community."

3.48 avg rating — 69 ratings

"A fascinating update of the nouveau roman, Littell’s collection of novellas, which, to my mind, secretly forms an entire novel, leans on beautifully written gender-fluid and non-gendered passages."

3.84 avg rating — 11,986 ratings

"Winter’s award-winning 2010 novel about an intersex child (called both “Wayne” and “Annabel”) is a widely praised representation of the interiority of a gender-fluid youth."

3.67 avg rating — 5,094 ratings

"Carter’s short, brilliant depiction of a dystopian American excoriates the dogmas (in cinema, religion, psychoanalysis, and various other mythologies) that bolster essentialist representation of gender."

3.91 avg rating — 6,166 ratings

"This dense, rewarding work of science fiction uses the pronoun “yt” to describe its genderless characters."

4.01 avg rating — 1,728 ratings