Delirium

The Safety, Health, and Happiness Handbook, colloquially known as The Book of Shhh, is a government-mandated source that outlines the cause, symptoms, and societal effects of amor deliria nervosa. Like the Christian Bible or the Muslim Qur’an, The Book of Shhh contains commandments, psalms, prayers, and stories meant to convey and support an all-encompassing ideology. In the alternate United States of the novel, the government is run by a president and a group called the Consortium of New Scientists. They have combined elements of science and religion to form what is known as the New Religion, which has become the foundation of this dystopian society. Each chapter of the novel is prefaced with excerpts from various in-world literature, some of which are direct passages from The Book of Shhh. Lauren Oliver claims that she enjoyed creating this vast fictional library of literature because it helped her shape the world of Delirium and reveal more about the dystopian setting without drowning readers in lengthy sessions of exposition.

Overall, The Book of Shhh is a symbol for the pervasive government tyranny that exists in the novel. The citizens of this alternate America are continuously fed