The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner is a 2009 dystopian novel by the American author James Dashner. It is set in a world suffering from a coronal mass ejection, where surviving civilians try to avoid an apocalyptic illness called the Flare.

The setting is a controlled experiment. An organisation called WICKED governs the world politically, is searching for a cure to the Flare, and uses the youngest generation of civilians, who are immune to it, as test subjects. The Glade is the enclosure where those subjects live, and the maze around them is the problem they have been assembled to solve, with the rule that the doors close at night supplying the book's deadline.

The arrival of the first girl in the Glade, and the message she brings, is what turns the routine into a crisis. The novel sold strongly: it was a number one New York Times bestseller and remained on the list for a hundred and forty-eight weeks, won the Young Adult Library Services Association award for best fiction for young adults in 2011, and was named a Kirkus Reviews teen book of the year.