It oughta be a movie: The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
This is one of the most distinctive "post-apocalypse" stories I have ever read. Set in Thailand, the apocalypse in question is a combination of climate change and genetic-engineering-run-amok. However, while it is not exactly a happy story, it does not fall into the same grim-dark aesthetic as many post-apocalypse tales, which is refreshing. Instead it is infused with a sense of tropical sunlight and fecundity - of "life finding a way", even when humans don't like the manner in which that happens!
Future Bangkok is even hotter than it is now, and the only thing that keeps the city from flooding due to rising sea levels is seawalls and energy-intensive pumps. But most other uses of fossil fuels are banned, and things run largely on human energy and springs that are wound up by genetically-modified elephant beasts1. "Calorie companies" have semi-accidentally ended up wiping out a large chunk of the plant diversity on earth by releasing diseases that only their GM crops are resistant to. Some of these diseases can also jump into humans and cause devastating plagues. "Calorie-man" Anderson Lake arrives in Bangkok, and is surprised to see for sale chilies, eggplants, rambutan, and other crops that were thought to be extinct, confirming that someone in Thailand has both a seedbank and access to at least one top-tier genetic engineer.
One of the things I love about this story is the well-rounded morally complex characters. Anderson Lake is a corporate spy for the hated Agrigen, but he is pretty much the only person who is even halfway nice to the titular "windup girl" - although he does still exploit her. Emiko is a genetically engineered human bred to be a secretary/courtesan for a Japanese businessman, but was abandoned in Thailand where her existence is illegal and her artificially fine-pored skin makes it hard for her to stay cool. She dreams of escaping to the north, where Anderson has told her that "New People" have set up their own society. Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, the "Tiger of Bangkok", an Environment Ministry "white shirt", tirelessly works to keep his country safe from imported plagues, but he and his colleagues can be brutal in doing so. His lieutenant, Kanya, is a more morally-grey young woman with a serious demeanor who has an interesting dynamic with the hot-spirited laughing Jaidee2. Hock Seng is a scheming, selfish man, but, as you learn his backstory as a refugee from ethnic cleansing, you realize why he is so focused on his own survival, and why he sometimes makes an exception to help someone else. Besides the unique setting and fascinating mix of cultures and characters, there are all sorts of fun details like the "Cheshires" - cats that are descended from novelty pets and continuously change color by shedding their fur - and the transportation of goods by zeppelin and clipper ship.
A major theme of the book is the toll of imperialism. Some of the imagery and terminology feels oddly archaic - some of the Westerners referring to local workers as "coolies" for example, and older place names like "Burma" instead of "Myanmar3" being employed - but I suspect that is intentional. It is certainly no accident that this story is set in Thailand, the only country in Southeast Asia to successfully resist colonization. The Thai folk in this story are putting up a similar resistance to the ecological and economic imperialism of the calorie companies. But you also see the internal conflicts, most notably between the Environment Ministry and the Trade Ministry as they jockey for power.
I also like the way the book handles religion. A lot of science fiction stories act as if religion simply doesn't exist in the future, or only does so only as a single cult. But in an apocalyptic-type setting, it is very likely that a lot of people would turn to religion and tradition for some kind of hope and sense of stability, and that is exactly what you see in 'The Windup Girl'. Buddhism is the most prominently represented. For example, the Thais believe that the world is full of ghosts who can't be reincarnated because they are too good to deserve the world as it is now4. They also mourn the loss of the Bo tree - the species under which Buddha achieved enlightenment - which was wiped out along with all other fig species. The Buddhism references also fit in well with another theme of the book - impermanence, AKA "the only constant is change". In the West there are the Grahamites, a Christian sect that particularly honors Noah and St. Francis, and has a habit of attacking GM test fields. In Malaysia, a group called the Green Headbands seems to trying to create a Muslim-Malay religio-ethnostate. Finally, the New People have their own gods (one of which is a Cheshire spirit, their windup kin). Like much of the rest of the world building, it feels real and plausible.
1. Which would be SUCH an awesome visual; I picture the oliphaunts from Lord of the Rings.
2. She's also either lesbian or bisexual. This doesn't matter that much to the plot - relationships are clearly not her strong suit or a major focus of her life - but the casualness with which it comes up is kind of nice, especially in a story with so many other types of prejudice and oppression on display.
3. The country's name since 1989; this book was published in 2009.
4. Late in the book, one such ghost actually gets a speaking role. It isn't 100% clear if he is real or a manifestation of Kanya's guilty conscience, but he occasionally seems to know information that she doesn't.
Adaptation issues: This story is pretty graphic, in terms of both murder and sexual violence. Anyone adapting it would have to make some conscious decisions about how much of that to show on screen, depending on what kind of rating they were going for and the messages they wanted to emphasize. For instance, to a reader it is hopefully obvious that the death and suffering the Calorie Companies unleashed on the world is a million times higher than anything the Environment Ministry perpetuates (though they definitely go too far at points)...but that might or might not be as obvious in a film, where direct bloodshed is so much more visceral. Similarly, the horrific stuff Emiko undergoes at the sex club where she works is balanced by her internal monologue. In particular, you learn that, while her body has been programmed to react in a way that suggests that she is down with anything, she really, REALLY isn't. This eventually leads to her snapping and using some of her other enhanced physical abilities5. She also has a lot of thoughts about what it means to be New People. But, unless you could convey those inner thoughts somehow, the club scenes could come off as gratuitous ickyness, and Emiko as being as soul-less as most of the other characters assume her to be.
In fact, as with a lot of sci-fi stories, one of the big challenges overall in adaptation would be conveying the necessary information about the world without awkward info-dumps. Flashback scenes and careful bits of dialogue would be key. For instance, some character should probably mention Thailand's escape from colonialism, as the book seems to assume the reader knows about that, but I suspect most western audiences don't.
Casting and costume design would also be important. There are multiple different Asian cultures represented here, and one wouldn't want to lose those distinctions, because cultural background and prejudices for some groups against others play an important role in how characters interact. Especially since the original book is written by a non-Asian author, it would be a good idea to make sure the script is read - or, better yet, written - by someone with a Southeast Asian cultural background to make sure everything does get portrayed properly. For instance, the way Hock Seng thinks often makes it feel like he is a time-traveler from pre-revolutionary China; it would take someone with more expertise in Chinese-Malaysian culture than me to tell if it is plausible that people there would double-down on tradition to that extent in this situation.
5. I'm generally not a huge fan of the "rape/abuse as trigger for badassery in female character" trope, but it does kind of work here. Emiko has been carefully conditioned and bred to be subservient. While she has already been questioning that training, it sort of makes sense that it would take something particularly extreme to flip her into murder mode.
