Delirium
Lauren Oliver's 2011 dystopian opens in an America where love has been classified as a disease called amor deliria nervosa, and every citizen is required to undergo the Cure on their eighteenth birthday. Seventeen-year-old Lena Haloway, whose mother killed herself rather than be cured, is counting the ninety-five days until she will be safely sterilized of feeling, paired with an approved match by government algorithm, and protected from the chaos that destroyed her family. Then she meets Alex, a guard at the lab where she takes her evaluation, and discovers the entire cured world has been built on a lie. Oliver writes Lena's slow conversion in the kind of breath-held first-person that defined the post-Hunger Games YA dystopian wave. The first of a trilogy that ends on a deliberately divisive note.
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What you might want to know about Delirium
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In a near-future United States, love has been classified as a disease and every citizen receives a cure on their eighteenth birthday. Ninety-five days before her own procedure, Lena meets a boy named Alex.
Lauren Oliver's Delirium trilogy has three books: Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem, plus several novellas. The trilogy is complete.
Yes. A film adaptation is in development with Universal Pictures. As of 2025, the project remains in development with no confirmed release date. An earlier Fox television pilot in 2014 was not picked up to series.
Delirium was written by Lauren Oliver, published in 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton.
Delirium is 429 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Delirium takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Delirium is a standalone novel by Lauren Oliver, not part of a series.
Delirium is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
