Books like 'Downriver'
Readers who enjoyed Downriver by Iain Sinclair also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary fantasy 20th century politics urban literary-fiction
-
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsSome inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.The story "Omelas" was first published in New Dimensions 3, a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won Le Guin the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story...Categorized as:
literary-fiction politics 20th-century anthologies audiobook classics contemporary dark -
![The BFG by Roald Dahl]()
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsCaptured by a giant! But the BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater, the Bonecruncher, or any of the other giants—rather than the BFG—she would have soon become breakfast...Categorized as:
literary-fiction urban 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book british-isles children -
![Corduroy by Don Freeman]()
Corduroy by Don Freeman
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsHave you ever dreamed of being locked in a department store at night? The endearing story of Corduroy paints a picture of the adventures that might unfold (for a teddy bear at least) in such a situation. When all the shoppers have gone home for the night, Corduroy climbs down from the shelf to look for his missing button...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure animals anthropomorphism audiobook book children -
![The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty]()
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsFour decades after it first terrified the world, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is back! An extraordinary classic work of horror and dark paranormal suspense. In this stunning 40th Anniversary Edition, a desperate mother and two priests fight to free the soul of a little girl from a supernatural entity of pure malevolence... -
-
![Cronopios and Famas by Julio Cortázar]()
Cronopios and Famas by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 25 ratings"The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity... -
![Perestroika by Tony Kushner]()
Perestroika by Tony Kushner
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe second half of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Angels in America, Perestroika steers the characters introduced in Millennium Approaches from the opportunistic eighties to a new sense of community in the nineties... -
![Buddha's Little Finger by Victor Pelevin]()
Buddha's Little Finger by Victor Pelevin
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRussian novelist Victor Pelevin is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most brilliant young writers at work today. His comic inventiveness and mind-bending talent prompted Time magazine to proclaim him a "psychedelic Nabokov for the cyber-age... -
![The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper]()
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe story of a train filled with toys and gifts for little boys and girls that breaks down before reaching the children. After asking several passing trains for help over the hill, a little blue train agrees to help the stranded toys. Even though she is small, the blue train tries her best to bring the toys to the children on the other side of the hill...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure animals book children children-books classics -
![End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar]()
End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsEnd of the game is one of the most important collections of stories of the second half of the 20th century. Engaged in transgressing the laws of conventional narrative, in these eighteen stories Julio Cortázar combines intertextuality, an unpublished use of the colloquial and endless game to bring the reader into a particular universe where nothing is what it seems...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies classics contemporary drama -
![Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges]()
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsHere is a handsome edition of one of Borges' "ficciones," in a translation first published in "Labyrinths" in 1962. It's an important story in the Borges' canon, incorporating most of the author's philosophical and esthetic preoccupations in a typically brief compass...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics contemporary fiction -
![Bestiary: The Selected Stories of Julio Cortázar by Julio Cortázar]()
Bestiary: The Selected Stories of Julio Cortázar by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsA collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style.A grieving family home becomes the site of a terrifying invasion. A frustrated love triangle, brought together by a plundered Aztec idol, spills over into brutality. A lodger’s inability to stop vomiting bunny rabbits inspires a personal confession...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fiction horror -
![Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie]()
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fairy-tale female-author -
![Collected Stories by Gabriel García Márquez]()
Collected Stories by Gabriel García Márquez
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCollected here are twenty-six of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most brilliant and enchanting short stories, presented in the chronological order of their publication in Spanish from three volumes: Eyes of a Blue Dog, Big Mama's Funeral, and The Incredible and Sad Tale of lnnocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics colombia contemporary fiction -
![Dialogues with Leucò by Cesare Pavese]()
Dialogues with Leucò by Cesare Pavese
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA series of dialogues between mythological figures, treating the question of human destiny as the personal content of myths. In his foreword, Pavese elaborates on his method in the Dialogues: "What is more acutely disturbing than to see familiar scenes troubled into new life? . . . A true revelation, I am convinced, can only emerge from stubborn concentration on a single problem... -
-
![Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino]()
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 53 ratings"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images...Categorized as:
literary-fiction urban 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook classics -
![Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino]()
Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsOne of the New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year: These traditional stories of Italy, retold by a literary master, are “a treasure” (Los Angeles Times)... -
![Mount Analogue by René Daumal]()
Mount Analogue by René Daumal
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn this novel/allegory the narrator/author sets sail in the yacht Impossible to search for Mount Analogue, the geographically located, albeit hidden, peak that reaches inexorably toward heaven. Daumal's symbolic mountain represents a way to truth that "cannot not exist," and his classic allegory of man's search for himself embraces the certainty that one can know and conquer one's own reality...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics contemporary fiction -
![How to Become King by Jan Terlouw]()
How to Become King by Jan Terlouw
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSeventeen years after the king of Katoren dies, a boy aspires to win the crown and is tested with seven impossible tasks by six Ministers...Categorized as:
literary-fiction fantasy children-books fiction young-adult classics action-adventure audiobook -
![LA Trompeta Del Cisne by E.B. White]()
LA Trompeta Del Cisne by E.B. White
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 57 ratingsLouis is a mute swan. His beloved Serena ignores him because of his handicap. To help him, his father steals a trumpet. Louis learns how to play it, not only to give his father the money to pay for the instrument, but also to win Serena's heart...Categorized as:
literary-fiction urban 20th-century action-adventure animals anthropomorphism audiobook book -
![Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme]()
Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis collection of pithy, brilliantly acerbic pieces is a companion to Sixty Stories, Barthelme's earlier retrospective volume. Barthelme spotlights the idiosyncratic, haughty, sometimes downright ludicrous behavior of human beings, but it is style rather than content which takes precedence... -
![Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami]()
Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsIn this propulsive novel by the author of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and The Elephant Vanishes, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work in any language fuses science fiction, the hard-boiled thriller and white-hot satire into a new element of the literary periodic table... -
![The Book of Sand & Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges]()
The Book of Sand & Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThe acclaimed translation of Borges's valedictory stories, in its first stand-alone edition Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of the twentieth century. Now Borges's remarkable last major story collection, The Book of Sand, is paired with a handful of writings from the very end of his life...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook classics contemporary fiction -
![Jade City by Fonda Lee]()
Jade City by Fonda Lee
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 57 ratingsJADE CITY is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu.The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities... -
![1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray]()
1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings1982, Janine is a liberal novel of the most satisfying kind. Set over the course of one night inside the head of Jock McLeish, an aging, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations, as he tipples in the bedroom of a small Scottish hotel, it makes an unanswerable case that republicanism is a state of absolute spiritual bankruptcy...Categorized as:
literary-fiction europe british-isles united-kingdom scotland fiction 20th-century contemporary -
-
![Lanark by Alasdair Gray]()
Lanark by Alasdair Gray
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis work, originally published in 1981, has been hailed as the most influential Scottish novel of the second half of the 20th century. Its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, personal and political, about humankind's inability to love and yet our compulsion to go on trying...Categorized as:
literary-fiction urban 20th-century action-adventure adult bildungsroman book classics -
![Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág]()
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOnce upon a time there was an old man and an old woman who were very lonely. They decided to get a cat, but when the old man went out searching, he found not one cat, but millions and billions and trillions of cats! Unable to decide which one would be the best pet, he brought them all home... -
![Литературный призрак (Большой роман) by David Mitchell, Дэвид Митчелл]()
Литературный призрак (Большой роман) by David Mitchell, Дэвид Митчелл
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsOblivious to the bizarre ways in which their lives intersect, nine characters - a terrorist in Okinawa, a record-shop clerk in Tokyo, a money-laundering British financier in Hong Kong, an old woman running a tea shack in China, a transmigrating "noncorpum" entity seeking a human host in Mongolia, a gallery-attendant-cum-art-thief in Petersburg, a drummer in London, a female physicist in Ireland,... -
![The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis de Bernières]()
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis de Bernières
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe epic finale of the Latin American trilogy following The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts and Senor Vivo and the Coca LordWhile the economy of his small South American country collapses, President Veracruz joins his improbable populace of ex-soldiers, former guerrillas, unfrocked priests and reformed - though by no means inactive - whores, in a bizarre search for sexual fulfilment... -
![World of Wonders by Robertson Davies]()
World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsHailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven... -
![Stone Junction by Jim Dodge]()
Stone Junction by Jim Dodge
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsCharging like a runaway semitrailer on a downhill grade and spanning the era from Haight-Ashbury's Summer of Love into the darkness of 1980s Manhattan, Stone Junction is a wise and wildly imaginative novel about Daniel Pearse, an orphaned child who is taken under the wings of the AMO -- the Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws... -
![Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins]()
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsThis is a gutsy, fun-loving, and provocative novel in which a bean can philosophises, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine... -
![Ghostwritten by David Mitchell]()
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsA gallery attendant at the Hermitage. A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China. A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia... -
![Bailey's Café by Gloria Naylor]()
Bailey's Café by Gloria Naylor
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in a diner where the food isn't very good and the ambience veers between heaven and hell, this bestselling novel from the author of Mama Day and The Women of Brewster Place is a feast for the senses and the spirit... -
![Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado]()
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIt surprises no one that the charming but wayward Vadinho dos Guimaraes–a gambler notorious for never winning—dies during Carnival. His long suffering widow Dona Flor devotes herself to her cooking school and her friends, who urge her to remarry. She is soon drawn to a kind pharmacist who is everything Vadinho was not, and is altogether happy to marry him...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics contemporary fiction -
-
![The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts by Louis de Bernières]()
The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts by Louis de Bernières
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThis rambunctious first novel by the author of the bestselling Corelli's Mandolin is set in an impoverished, violent, yet ravishingly beautiful country somewhere in South America. When the haughty Dona Constanza decides to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, the consequences are at once tragic, heroic, and outrageously funny... -
![The Umbrella Man and Other Stories by Roald Dahl]()
The Umbrella Man and Other Stories by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsIs it really possible to invent a machine that does the job of a writer? What is it about the landlady’s house that makes it so hard for her guests to leave? Does Sir Basil Turton value most his wife or one of his priceless sculptures? These compelling tales are a perfect introduction to the adult writing of a storytelling genius...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure anthologies children children-books classics comedy -
![Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins]()
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 56 ratingsStill Life with Woodpecker is a sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders... -
![Peace by Gene Wolfe]()
Peace by Gene Wolfe
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsMesmerizing sci-fi from the author the Denver Post calls "one of the literary giants of science fiction." The melancholy memoir of Alden Dennis Weer, an embittered old man living in a small midwestern town, reveals a miraculous dimension. For Weer's imagination has the power to obliterate time and reshape reality, transcending even death itself...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics contemporary fiction -
![Colorful by Eto Mori]()
Colorful by Eto Mori
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA beloved and bestselling classic in Japan, this groundbreaking tale of a dead soul who gets a second chance is now available in English for the very first time."Congratulations, you've won the lottery!" shouts the angel Prapura to a formless soul. The soul hasn't been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet—he's been given a second chance...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies asian-mc audiobook classics contemporary drama -
![Death with Interruptions by José Saramago]()
Death with Interruptions by José Saramago
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsNobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago's brilliant new novel poses the question what happens when the grim reaper decides there will be no more death?On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This, of course, causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially mass celebration...Categorized as:
literary-fiction politics 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati]()
Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn Catastrophe, the renowned Italian short story writer Dino Buzzati brings vividly to life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known, everyday world. In stories touched by the fantastical and the strange, and filled with humor, irony, and menace, Buzzati illuminates the nightmarish side of our ordinary existence...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fiction horror -
![Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu]()
Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsPart visceral dream-memoir, part fictive journey through a hallucinatory Bucharest, Mircea Cărtărescu's BLINDING was one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a bestseller from the day of its release... -
![Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated by James Thurber]()
Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated by James Thurber
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsJames Thurber has been called "one of our great American institutions' (Stanley Walker), "a magnificent satirist (Boston Transcript), and "a Joyce in false-face" (New York Times). The New York Herald Tribune submits that he is "as blithe as Benchley...as savage as Swift..Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies children classics comedy contemporary -
![In the Penny Arcade by Steven Millhauser]()
In the Penny Arcade by Steven Millhauser
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe seven stories of In the Penny Arcade blend both the real and the fantastic in a seductive mix that illuminates the full range of Steven Millhauser's gifts, from 'August Eschenburg', the story of a clockmaker's son whose extraordinary talent for creating animated figures is lost on a world whose taste for the perverse and crude supersedes that of the refined and beautiful, to 'Cathay', a...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction horror low-fantasy -
-
![The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino]()
The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsTwo novellas: the first, a parody of medieval knighthood told by a nun; the second, a fantasy about a nobleman bisected into his good and evil halves. “Bravura pieces... executed with brilliance and brio”(Chicago Tribune). Translated by Archibald Colquhoun. A Helen and Kurt Wolff BookOriginally published as two distinct volumes: 'Il visconte dimezzato' (1952) and 'Il cavaliere inesistente' (1959)...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics contemporary -
![The Jade Cabinet by Rikki Ducornet]()
The Jade Cabinet by Rikki Ducornet
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMade speechless by her eccentric father, the beautiful Etheria is traded for a piece of precious jade. Memory, her sister, tells her story, that of a childhood enlivened by Lewis Carroll and an orangutan named Dr. Johnson and envenomed by the pernicious courtship of Radulph Tubbs, Queen Victoria's own Dragon of Industry...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary female-author fiction magical-realism -
![Kingdoms of Elfin by Sylvia Townsend Warner]()
Kingdoms of Elfin by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsElfindom is an aristocratic society, jealous of its privileges. The ruling classes engage in such pursuits as patronizing the arts or hunting with the Royal Pack of Werewolves, while the lower orders take pleasure in conducting brutal raiding parties into the world to torment mortals... -
![Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King]()
Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsStrong, Sassy women and hard-luck hardheaded men, all searching for the middle ground between Native American tradition and the modern world, perform an elaborate dance of approach and avoidance in this magical, rollicking tale by Cherokee author Thomas King... -
![Ishmael by Daniel Quinn]()
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsWinner of the 1992 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, "Ishmael" is a unique and captivating novel that has earned a large and passionate following among readers and critics worldwide...Categorized as:
literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure animals audiobook book classics -
![Unlikely Stories, Mostly by Alasdair Gray]()
Unlikely Stories, Mostly by Alasdair Gray
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsThis is Alastair Gray's first collection of short stories. This edition includes a new story, Inches In a Column, that was lost at the time of original publication. He is the author of Lanark, Why Scots Should Rule Scotland and won the Whitbread Prize for Poor Things...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fiction literary
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.
