Books like 'The Waste Land'
Readers who enjoyed The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century military, war & conflict classics university literary-fiction myths existentialism war high-school
-
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 78 ratingsSet in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons -- whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new, rich land...Categorized as:
classics epic high-school literary-fiction philosophical season-summer university war -
![Spark of Life: A Novel of Resistance by Erich Maria Remarque]()
Spark of Life: A Novel of Resistance by Erich Maria Remarque
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSPARK OF LIFE509 is a political prisoner in a German concentration camp. For ten years, he has persevered in the most hellish conditions. Deathly weak, he still has his wits about him and he senses that the end of the war is near. If he and the other living corpses in his barracks can hold on for liberation--or force their own--then their suffering will not have been in vain... -
![The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War by Michael Shaara]()
The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War by Michael Shaara
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsIncisive portraits of Lee, Longstreet, Meade, and other Civil War leaders are interwoven with rich historical detail to provide a fictional recreation of the bloody battle at Gettysburg, in a new thirtieth anniversary edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novel. 10,000 first printing...Categorized as:
classics epic high-school literary-fiction war 20th-century action-adventure american-civil-war -
![The Girl in the Striped Dress by Ellie Midwood]()
The Girl in the Striped Dress by Ellie Midwood
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsGermany, 1947. A strange case scheduled for the Denazification Court lands on the desk of an American psychiatrist currently serving in Germany, Dr. Hoffman. A former Auschwitz guard, Franz Dahler, is set to appear in court, and he has requested to bring the most unexpected witness to testify in his defense - one of his former inmates and current wife, Helena... -
-
![The Postcard by Anne Berest]()
The Postcard by Anne Berest
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAnne Berest’s luminous, moving, and unforgettable new novel The Postcard is the most acclaimed and beloved French book in recent years...Categorized as:
war literary-fiction season-summer historical-fiction fiction ww2 historical audiobook -
![Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield]()
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsAt Thermopylae, a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece, the feared and admired Spartan soldiers stood three hundred strong. Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army.Day after bloody day they withstood the terrible onslaught, buying time for the Greeks to rally their forces... -
![The Brothers K by David James Duncan]()
The Brothers K by David James Duncan
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsDuncan took almost 10 years to follow up the publication of his much-praised first novel, The River Why, but this massive second effort is well worth the wait. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad... -
![Το νούμερο 31328 by Ilias Venezis, Ηλίας Βενέζης]()
Το νούμερο 31328 by Ilias Venezis, Ηλίας Βενέζης
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsTο Nούμερο 31328 είναι η ίδια η ταυτότητα του συγγραφέα, τότε που παιδί δεκαοκτώ χρόνων οδηγήθηκε από τους Tούρκους στα κάτεργα της Aνατολής. Tο βιβλίο είναι ένα συγκλονιστικό χρονικό «γραμμένο με αίμα», όπως επεσήμανε ο Bενέζης, προσθέτοντας: «Λέω για την καυτή ύλη, για τη σάρκα που στάζει το αίμα της και πλημμυρίζει τις σελίδες του»... -
![Hornblower and the Hotspur by C.S. Forester]()
Hornblower and the Hotspur by C.S. Forester
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsHornblower's reconnaissance mission quickly turns to warfare in this installment of the beloved series of naval adventures by C. S. Forester, "a master of the genre" (New York Times). April 1803. The Peace of Amiens is breaking down. Napoleon is building ships and amassing an army just across the Channel...Categorized as:
classics epic literary-fiction season-summer war 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
![Life in the Tomb by Stratis Myrivilis, Στρατής Μυριβήλης]()
Life in the Tomb by Stratis Myrivilis, Στρατής Μυριβήλης
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 12 ratings"Life in the Tomb" a war novel written in journal form by a sergeant in the trenches, has been the single most successful and widely read serious work of fiction in Greece since its publication in serial form in 1923-1924, having sold more than 80,000 copies in book form despite its inclusion on the list of censored novels under both the Metaxas regime and the German occupation... -
![Poems of Paul Celan by Paul Celan]()
Poems of Paul Celan by Paul Celan
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe peerless translations of this haunted and haunting Holocaust poet, including ten new poems and an illuminating essay by the translator. Paul Celan is one the twentieth century's most essential poets, and twenty-two years after its publication, Poems of Paul Celan continues to be the single truest access for English-speakers to this poet's work... -
![Flying Colours by C.S. Forester]()
Flying Colours by C.S. Forester
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsForced to surrender his ship, the Sutherland, after a long and bloody battle, Captain Horatio Hornblower now bides his time as a prisoner in a French fortress... -
![Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa]()
Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"In the tempestuous closing decades of the sixteenth century, the Empire of Japan writhes in chaos as the shogunate crumbles and rival warlords battle for supremacy. Warrior monks in their armed citadels block the road to the capital; castles are destroyed, villages plundered, fields put to the touch." "Amid this devastation, three men dream of uniting the nation... -
![Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Richard Harris]()
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Richard Harris
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis collection brings together music played by Captain Corelli himself and original pieces evoking the sounds and events of the book and of 3 earlier novels, the Latin Trilogy', by Louis de Bernieres... -
-
![Covenant With Death by John Harris]()
Covenant With Death by John Harris
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThey joined for their country. They fought for each other.When war breaks out in 1914, Mark Fenner and his Sheffield friends immediately flock to Kitchener's call. Amid waving flags and boozy celebration, the three men - Fen, his best friend Locky and self-assured Frank, rival for the woman Fen loves - enlist as volunteers to take on the Germans and win glory... -
![The Lifeline by Deborah Swift]()
The Lifeline by Deborah Swift
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFrom the heart of Norway to Shetland in Scotland, one couple fight to overthrow the Nazis…1942, Nazi-occupied NorwaySchoolteacher Astrid Dahl has always kept out of trouble. But when she is told to teach the fascist Nazi curriculum, she refuses and starts a teacher’s rebellion, persuading eight thousand teachers to go on strike... -
![A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger]()
A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 20 ratings"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" is a short story by J. D. Salinger, originally published in the January 31, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. It was anthologized in 1949's 55 Short Stories from The New Yorker, as well as in Salinger's 1953 collection, Nine Stories...Categorized as:
classics dark high-school literary-fiction season-summer university war 20th-century -
![The Green Gauntlet by R.F. Delderfield]()
The Green Gauntlet by R.F. Delderfield
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPaul and Claire Craddock have grown older in years - but not in spirit. World War II is over. But for Craddock and his family there are new battles to be fought and won. The new property laws enable speculators to reap huge profits from agricultural lands, and Paul's livelihood is threatened... -
![Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]()
Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsCancer Ward - a largely autobiographical account of a group of people who pass through the cancer wing of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death - was hailed by Time as 'a literary event of the first magnitude' when it first appeared in 1966... -
![The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D. Yalom]()
The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D. Yalom
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWhen sixteen-year-old Alfred Rosenberg is called into his headmaster’s office for anti-Semitic remarks he made during a school speech, he is forced, as punishment, to memorize passages about Spinoza from the autobiography of the German poet Goethe. Rosenberg is stunned to discover that Goethe, his idol, was a great admirer of the Jewish seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza...Categorized as:
classics existentialism literary-fiction philosophical war 20th-century adult audiobook -
![To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfield]()
To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfield
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsYoung David Powlett-Jones, a Welsh miner's son, is invalided home from France when he suffers severe shell shock on the Western Front... -
![Bent by Martin Sherman]()
Bent by Martin Sherman
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMartin Sherman's worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. "It educated the world," Sherman explains. "People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners... -
![Julian by Gore Vidal]()
Julian by Gore Vidal
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis is an alternate cover ed. for ISBN 037572706X.The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal’s finest historical novels.Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire...Categorized as:
classics epic literary-fiction myths philosophical war 20th-century action-adventure -
![The Kites by Romain Gary]()
The Kites by Romain Gary
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn a small farm in Normandy, as Hitler rises to power in Germany, young Ludo comes of age in the care of his Uncle Ambrose, an eccentric mailman, kite-maker, and pacifist. Ludo’s quiet existence changes the day he meets Lila, a girl from the aristocratic Polish family who own the estate next door. In a single glance, Ludo instantly falls in love forever; Lila, on the other hand, remains elusive... -
-
![The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa]()
The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe War of the End of the World is one of the great modern historical novels. Inspired by a real episode in Brazilian history, Mario Vargas Llosa tells the unforgettable story of an apocalyptic movement, led by a mysterious prophet, in which prostitutes, beggars and bandits establish Canudos, a new republic, a libertarian paradise... -
![Trouble Brewing by Marion Kummerow]()
Trouble Brewing by Marion Kummerow
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsRichard Klausen has survived eighteen grueling months at the Eastern front. Transferred to a security unit out off Lodz, Poland he soon finds out that fighting the Red Army was the easy task. When his unit is assigned to do the unthinkable, will Richard obey his orders or his conscience? Trouble Brewing is book 4 of the War Girl Series, but can be read as stand-alone... -
![Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani]()
Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis collection of important stories by novelist, journalist, teacher, and Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani includes the stunning novella Men in the Sun (1962), the basis of the The Deceived. Also in the volume are "The Land of Sad Oranges" (1958), "'If You Were a Horse..Categorized as:
classics dystopia literary-fiction university war 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway, John Hemingway]()
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway, John Hemingway
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsTHE ONLY COMPLETE COLLECTION BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection...Categorized as:
classics high-school literary-fiction university war 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer]()
The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAnton Myrer's beloved, bestselling novel of America's World War II generation is as powerful now as it was upon its publication. An immediate classic, it tells the story of five Harvard men, the women they loved -- and the elegant car that came to symbolize their romantic youth... -
![Our Last Goodbye by Shirley Dickson, Joan Walker]()
Our Last Goodbye by Shirley Dickson, Joan Walker
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA heart-wrenching, poignant and totally unforgettable tale of a young woman who must finally face up to the secret she has hidden for a lifetime. A beautiful World War Two novel for fans of Wives of War, Lisa Wingate and Diney Costeloe, that will have you reaching for the Kleenex... -
![The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel by Isaac Babel]()
The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel by Isaac Babel
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFollowing the historic publication of Norton's The Complete Works of Isaac Babel in the fall of 2001, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel appears as the most authoritative and complete edition of his fiction ever published in paperback... -
![The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir]()
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn her most famous novel, Simone de Beauvoir does not flinch in her look at Parisian intellectual society at the end of the Second World War. Drawing on those who surrounded her -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Arthur Koestler -- and her passionate love affair with Nelson Algren, Beauvoir dissects the emotional and philosophical currents of her time... -
![Fields of Fire by James Webb]()
Fields of Fire by James Webb
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOriginally published in 1978, Webb's classic novel of the Vietnam War follows three soldiers from different worlds who are plunged into a white-hot murderous realm of jungle warfare as it was fought by one Marine platoon in the An Hoa Basin in 1969.'They each had their reasons for being a soldier. They each had their illusions. Goodrich came from Harvard... -
![A Light in the Window by Marion Kummerow]()
A Light in the Window by Marion Kummerow
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBerlin, 1941: Margarete Rosenbaum is working as a housemaid for a senior Nazi officer when his house is bombed, leaving her the only survivor. But when she’s mistaken for his daughter in the aftermath of the blast, Margarete knows she can make a bid for freedom…Issued with temporary papers—and with the freedom of not being seen as Jewish—a few hours are all she needs to escape to relative safety... -
-
![The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald]()
The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAt first The Emigrants appears simply to document the lives of four Jewish émigrés in the twentieth century. But gradually, as Sebald's precise, almost dreamlike prose begins to draw their stories, the four narrations merge into one overwhelming evocation of exile and loss... -
![The First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway]()
The First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom Ernest Hemingway's Preface: 'There are many kinds of stories in this book. I hope you will find some that you like- In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with... -
![There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury]()
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsFirst published in Collier's, May 6, 1950.The story concerns a household in Allendale, California, in the aftermath of a nuclear war...Categorized as:
classics dystopia high-school literary-fiction philosophical university war 20th-century -
![The Mahabharata by Jean-Claude Carrière]()
The Mahabharata by Jean-Claude Carrière
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA unique dramatization of India's greatest epic poem, fifteen times longer than the Bible, The Mahabharata has played to enthralled audiences throughout Europe, the Far East and America. Regarded as the culmination of Peter Brook's extraordinary research into the possibilities of theatre, the production has been hailed as the 'theatrical event of this century' (Sunday Times)... -
![One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez]()
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 53 ratingsProbably García Márquez finest and most famous work. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of a mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul...Categorized as:
classics epic high-school literary-fiction season-summer university war 20th-century -
![The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot, Caroldean K. Cummings]()
The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot, Caroldean K. Cummings
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 35 ratings"The Waste Land, Prufrock, and Other Poems" is a collection of T. S. Eliot's early poetry. This collection brings together "The Waste Land," arguably T. S. Eliot's most famous poem, with the poetry originally published in "Prufrock and Other Observations" and "Poems (1920)...Categorized as:
classics existentialism high-school literary-fiction philosophical university war 20th-century -
![The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell]()
The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAnthony Powell’s universally acclaimed epic A Dance to the Music of Time offers a matchless panorama of twentieth-century London. Now, for the first time in decades, readers in the United States can read the books of Dance as they were originally published—as twelve individual novels—but with a twenty-first-century twist: they’re available only as e-books... -
![Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman, Robert Chandler]()
Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman, Robert Chandler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsEverything Flows is Vasily Grossman’s final testament, written after the Soviet authorities suppressed his masterpiece, Life and Fate. The main story is simple: released after thirty years in the Soviet camps, Ivan Grigoryevich must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world... -
![Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson]()
Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs two pals wander the streets of Belfast in search of something better--a better pint, a better job, a better woman, a better now--readers are treated to their hilarious misadventures, political intrigues, and outlandish schemes... -
![The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones]()
The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThom Jones made his literary debut in The New Yorker in 1991. Within six months his stories appeared in Harper's, Esquire, Mirabella, Story, Buzz, and in The New Yorker twice more. "The Pugilist at Rest" - the title story from this stunning collection - took first place in Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards and was selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 1992... -
-
![Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović]()
Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMiljenko Jergovic’s remarkable début collection of stories, Sarajevo Marlboro – winner of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize – earned him wide acclaim throughout Europe. Croatian by birth, Jergovic ? spent his childhood in Sarajevo and chose to remain there throughout most of the war...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction university war 20th-century action-adventure anthologies children-books -
![The Seven Year Dress by Paulette Mahurin]()
The Seven Year Dress by Paulette Mahurin
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsOne of the darkest times in human history was the insane design and execution to rid the world of Jews and “undesirables.” At the hands of the powerful evil madman Adolf Hitler, families were ripped apart and millions were slaughtered. Persecution, torture, devastation, and enduring the unthinkable remained for those who lived. This is the story of one woman who lived to tell her story... -
![Clea by Lawrence Durrell]()
Clea by Lawrence Durrell
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe magnificent final volume of one of the most widely acclaimed fictional masterpieces of the postwar era.Few books have been awaited as eagerly as Clea, the sensuous and electrically suspenseful novel that resolves the enigmas of the Alexandria Quartet... -
![Burr by Gore Vidal]()
Burr by Gore Vidal
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsGore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers... -
![Enemies of the Heart by Rebecca Dean]()
Enemies of the Heart by Rebecca Dean
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBerlin 1909 - cousins Vicky and Zelda are about to meet the Remer brothers... Vicky Hudson is only seventeen when she marries Berthold Remer and moves from her idyllic Yorkshire home to Berlin. Adjusting to her new life isn't easy, not least when she discovers that the Remer family are producing weaponry for the German army... -
![Palace of Tears by Anna King]()
Palace of Tears by Anna King
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWhen Emily Ford’s kindly employers decide to escape the Zeppelin raids that bedevil Hackney in 1916, the pretty housemaid is delighted to return to her parents for an unexpected break.But the holiday proves anything but peaceful...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.
