The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi)

In the future, genetic modification, climate change, and short-sighted agricultural policy have caused the world food supply to crash. Bangkok is a city under siege, with giant levees to keep out the ocean and strong barriers to keep out unnatural things - including windups. These "New People" are genetically designed and creche-grown, and one of them ends up abandoned in Bangkok when her Japanese owner tires of her. She is just one of the people trying to survive in this dystopian future. Others are a calorie man, secretly working for an American company making its money providing food to starving people. One is a displaced Chinese man whose family all died in a wave of riots in Malaysia. One is an official taking seriously the attempt to keep dangerous products out of the city, and his unsmiling assistant. How these various people deal with the corruption, physical and psychological, that surrounds them makes for a complex and moving story.