Books like 'The Man Without Qualities: Volume I'
Readers who enjoyed The Man Without Qualities: Volume I by Robert Musil also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century psychological classics literary-fiction historical-fiction ww1 satire
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Death and the Dervish by Meša Selimović
Rated: 4.55 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsDeath and the Dervish is an acclaimed novel by Bosnian writer Mesa Selimovic. It recounts the story of Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish residing in an Islamic monastery in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century during the Ottoman Turk hegemony over the Balkans. When his brother is arrested, he must descend into the Kafkaesque world of the Ottoman authorities in his search to discover what happened to him...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book fiction -
![Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali]()
Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsAvailable in English for the first time, this best-selling Turkish classic of love and alienation in a changing world captures the vibrancy of interwar Berlin. A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade and discover life in 1920s Berlin...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![Time Regained by Marcel Proust, D.J. Enright]()
Time Regained by Marcel Proust, D.J. Enright
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTime Regained, the final volume of In Search of Lost Time, begins in the bleak and uncertain years of World War I. Years later, after the war’s end, Proust’s narrator returns to Paris and reflects on time, reality, jealousy, artistic creation, and the raw material of literature—his past life...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book dark-academia -
![Body and Soul by Frank Conroy]()
Body and Soul by Frank Conroy
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the dim light of a basement apartment, six-year-old Claude Rawlings sits at an old white piano, picking out the sounds he has heard on the radio and shutting out the reality of his lonely world.The setting is 1940s New York, a city that is "long gone, replaced by another city of the same name...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century book coming-of-age drama epic -
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![A Daughter's Sorrow by Cathy Sharp]()
A Daughter's Sorrow by Cathy Sharp
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHeartache and hardship in London’s East End, from the bestselling author of The Orphans of Halfpenny StreetBridget has always been the one to take on the responsibility for looking after her family... -
![The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso, Tim Parks]()
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso, Tim Parks
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsPresenting the stories of Zeus and Europa, Theseus and Ariadne, the birth of Athens and the fall of Troy, in all their variants, Calasso also uncovers the distant origins of secrets and tragedy, virginity, and rape. "A perfect work like no other. (Calasso) has re-created . . . the morning of our world."--Gore Vidal. 15 engravings...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult ancient-civilization book christian -
![Extinction by Thomas Bernhard]()
Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard’s magnum opus. Franz-Josef Murau—the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family—lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies comedy -
![Collected Stories by Carson McCullers]()
Collected Stories by Carson McCullers
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe novelist, dramatist, and poet Carson McCullers was at the peak of her powers as a writer of short fiction.In nineteen stories that explore her signature themes of wounded adolescence, loneliness in marriage, and the tragicomedy of life in the South, McCullers's novellas "The Member of the Wedding" and "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" are also included... -
![Remembrance of Things Past: Volume III - The Captive, The Fugitive, & Time Regained by Marcel Proust]()
Remembrance of Things Past: Volume III - The Captive, The Fugitive, & Time Regained by Marcel Proust
Rated: 4.55 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe third and final volume includes THE CAPTIVE, THE FUGITIVE, and TIME REGAINED...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies family fiction historical literary -
![Keep Saying Their Names by Simon Stranger]()
Keep Saying Their Names by Simon Stranger
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsInspired by historical events and by personal history, a shattering, exquisite double portrait of a Norwegian family savaged by World War II and of a man devoted to crimes against humanity, conjoined by an actual house of horrors they both call home...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book fiction historical -
![Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig]()
Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsStefan's Zweig's Letter from an Unknown Woman and other stories contains a new translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell of one of his most celebrated novellas, Letter from an Unknown Woman , the inspiration for a classic 1948 Hollywood film by Max Ophüls, as well as three new stories, appearing in English for the first time.A famous author receives a letter on his forty-first birthday...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction satire 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook epistolary -
![The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote]()
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA landmark collection that brings together Truman Capote’s life’s work in the form he called his “great love,” The Complete Stories confirms Capote’s status as a master of the short story...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies drama fiction -
![The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig by Stefan Zweig]()
The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe collected stories of Stefan Zweig, one of the most popular writers of short fiction of the twentieth century This collection brings together twenty-three of Stefan Zweig's best-loved short stories. Written in his typically flowing and readable style, these tales are characterised by their pacing, their psychological insightfulness, and above all their pervading humanity...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction fiction 20th-century anthologies psychological fantasy historical -
![The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham]()
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsBased on the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is W. Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius. Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
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![Collected Stories and Other Writings by John Cheever]()
Collected Stories and Other Writings by John Cheever
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsJohn Cheever’s stories rank among the finest achievements of twentieth-century short fiction. Ensnared by the trappings of affluence, adrift in the emptiness of American prosperity, his characters find themselves in the midst of dramas that, however comic, pose profound questions about conformity and class, pleasure and propriety, and the conduct and meaning of an individual life...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction fiction 20th-century postmodernism anthologies psychological historical -
![Random Harvest by James Hilton]()
Random Harvest by James Hilton
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCharles Rainier, a prosperous Briton, loses his memory as a result of shellshock in the First World War...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction ww1 20th-century action-adventure adult amnesia -
![The Town by William Faulkner]()
The Town by William Faulkner
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsContinues Faulkner's tale of the Snopes family, set in rural, post-bellum Mississippi... -
![The Cremator by Ladislav Fuks, Rajendra A. Chitnis]()
The Cremator by Ladislav Fuks, Rajendra A. Chitnis
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratings“The devil’s neatest trick is to persuade us that he doesn’t exist.”—Giovanni Papini It is a maxim that both rings true in our contemporary world and pervades this tragicomic novel of anxiety and evil set amid the horrors of World War II... -
![Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell]()
Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe dazzling second volume of The Alexandria Quartet--an enthralling and deeply disturbing work of gorgeous surfaces and endless deceptions.In Alexandra, in the years before the Second World War, an exiled Irish schoolteacher seeks to unravel his sexual obsession with two women: the tubercular cafe dancer, Melissa, and Justine, the alluring Jewish wife of a wealthy Coptic Christian...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book fiction -
![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...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book comedy -
![All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner]()
All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsScarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction satire 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook -
![Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist by Erich Kästner]()
Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist by Erich Kästner
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGoing to the Dogs is set in Berlin after the crash of 1929 and before the Nazi takeover, years of rising unemployment and financial collapse. The moralist in question is Jakob Fabian, “aged thirty-two, profession variable, at present advertising copywriter . . -
![A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr]()
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church... -
![A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein]()
A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book fiction -
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![Selected Short Stories by William Faulkner]()
Selected Short Stories by William Faulkner
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner—also available are Snopes, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!William Faulkner was a master of the short story...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies fiction gothic -
![The Mansion by William Faulkner]()
The Mansion by William Faulkner
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Mansion completes Faulkner’s great trilogy of the Snopes family in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston, and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of this indomitable post-bellum family, who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation... -
![The Ogre by Michel Tournier]()
The Ogre by Michel Tournier
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn international bestseller and winner of the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, The Ogre is a masterful tale of innocence, perversion, and obsession. It follows the passage of strange, gentle Abel Tiffauges from submissive schoolboy to "ogre" of the Nazi school at the castle of Kaltenborn, taking us deeper into the dark heart of fascism than any novel since The Tin Drum... -
![Roman Fever (and Other Stories) by Edith Wharton]()
Roman Fever (and Other Stories) by Edith Wharton
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA Virago Modern Classic These stories - all powerful moral analyses - demonstrate the true professionalism of Edith Wharton...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies female-author fiction -
![Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb]()
Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOriginally written and slated for publication in 1939, this long-forgotten masterpiece was shelved by Random House when The Grapes of Wrath met with wide acclaim...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book family -
![The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev]()
The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSergey did not know that the colonel, having locked himself all the previous night in his little study, had deliberated upon this ritual with all his power. "We must not aggravate, but ease the last moments of our son," resolved the colonel firmly, and he carefully weighed every possible phase of the conversation, every act and movement that might take place on the following day... -
![The Drinker by Hans Fallada]()
The Drinker by Hans Fallada
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis astonishing, autobiographical tour de force was written by Hans Fallada in an encrypted notebook while he was incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum. Discovered after his death, it tells the tale—often fierce, often poignant, often extremely funny—of a small businessman losing control as he fights valiantly to blot out an increasingly oppressive society...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
![U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money by John Dos Passos]()
U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money by John Dos Passos
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the novels that make up the U.S.A.trilogy—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—Dos Passos creates an unforgettable collective portrait of America, shot through with sardonic comedy and brilliant social observation. He interweaves the careers of his characters and the events of their time with a narrative verve and breathtaking technical skill that make U.S.A...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction satire ww1 20th-century adult anthologies -
![Mysteries by Knut Hamsun]()
Mysteries by Knut Hamsun
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMysteries (1892) is the story of Johan Nilsen Nagel, a mysterious stranger who suddenly turns up in a small Norwegian town one summer-and just as suddenly disappears. Nagel is a complete outsider, a sort of modern Christ treated in a spirit of near parody...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies europe existentialism fiction -
![The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig]()
The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe post-office girl is Christine, who looks after her ailing mother and toils in a provincial Austrian post office in the years just after the Great War. One afternoon, as she is dozing among the official forms and stamps, a telegraph arrives addressed to her. It is from her rich aunt, who lives in America and writes requesting that Christine join her and her husband in a Swiss Alpine resort...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction ww1 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
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![Mephisto by Klaus Mann]()
Mephisto by Klaus Mann
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsKlaus Mann - Thomas Mann’s son - wrote MEPHISTO while living in exile from the Germany of World War II. In it he captures the Isherwood-like atmosphere of Nazi Germany while telling a satiric story about the rise to power of one man - a thinly veiled caricature of his own brother-in-law...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction satire 20th-century audiobook book drama -
![The Ghost Road by Pat Barker]()
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn alternate cover edition can be found here.As World War I winds to a close, two men--Dr. William Rivers, a psychologist whose dedicated healing sends men back to the brutal front, and Billy Prior, a shell-shocked soldier determined to rejoin the final English offensive--are profounded affected by the events of the era. Winner of the 1995 Booker Prize... -
![Vladimir Nabokov: Novels 1955–1962 by Vladimir Nabokov]()
Vladimir Nabokov: Novels 1955–1962 by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis Library of America volume is the second of three volumes that contain the most authoritative versions of the English works of the brilliant Russian émigré, Vladimir Nabokov.Lolita (1955), Nabokov’s single most famous work, is one of the most controversial and widely read books of its time...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction fiction humor 20th-century psychological politics historical -
![Regeneration by Pat Barker]()
Regeneration by Pat Barker
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsRegeneration, one in Pat Barker's series of novels confronting the psychological effects of World War I, focuses on treatment methods during the war and the story of a decorated English officer sent to a military hospital after publicly declaring he will no longer fight. Yet the novel is much more... -
![The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker]()
The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe masterful second novel in Pat Barker's classic 'Regeneration' trilogy - from the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the GirlsWINNER OF THE 1993 GUARDIAN FICTION PRIZE'Spellbinding and startlingly original' Sunday Telegraph'Gripping, moving, profoundly intelligent' Independent on Sunday'A new vision of what the First World War did to human beings, male... -
![Forest of the Hanged by Liviu Rebreanu]()
Forest of the Hanged by Liviu Rebreanu
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsDuring the First World War, just behind the eastern front, there was a forest, where Austrians and Hungarians used to hang deserters. To this place came Apostol Bologa, a young Romanian officer eager to serve his country. Born in a Romanian region of Transylvania which was then under Hungarian rule, he had naturally enough joined the Austro-Hungarian army... -
![The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter]()
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDespite the enormous success--both critical and popular--of her novel Ship of Fools, Katherine Anne Porter's reputation as one of America's most distinguished writers rest chiefly on her superb short stories. This volume brings together the collections Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning Tower as well as four stories not available elsewhere in book form.Go little book..Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies female-author fiction -
![On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin]()
On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLewis and Benjamin Jones, identical twins, were born with the century on a farm on the English-Welsh border. For eighty years they live on the farm--sharing the same clothes, tilling the same soil, sleeping in the same bed. Their lives and the lives of their neighbors--farmers, drovers, clergymen, traders, coffin-makers--are only obliquely touched by the chaos of twentieth-century progress... -
![Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley]()
Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn the final days of the Second World War, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley scrawls his desperate account on the walls and ceilings of his ice-cold prison high in the Austrian Alps. Officers of the liberating army discover his frozen, disfigured corpse and his astonishing testament - the sordid truth that he alone possessed...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult alternate-history book fiction -
![The Spider's House by Paul Bowles, Francine Prose]()
The Spider's House by Paul Bowles, Francine Prose
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in Fez, Morocco, during that country's 1954 nationalist uprising, The Spider's House is perhaps Paul Bowles's most beautifully subtle novel, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult black-mc book -
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![Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell]()
Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWalter Bridge is an ambitious lawyer who redoubles his efforts and time at the office whenever he senses that his family needs something, even when what they need is more of him and less of his money. Affluence, material assets, and comforts create a cocoon of community respectability that cloaks the void within - not the skeleton in the closet but a black hole swallowing the whole household...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction satire 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook -
![The Fratricides by Nikos Kazantzakis]()
The Fratricides by Nikos Kazantzakis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Fratricides by the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis recounts the tragic violence that swallowed the Greek countryside in the civil war of the late 1940s. Castello, a village in Epirus is not spared all the death and destruction which culminated during the Holy Week...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book fiction -
![Her Side of the Story by Alba de Céspedes]()
Her Side of the Story by Alba de Céspedes
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFrom the author of Forbidden Notebook, Alba de Céspedes, a richly told novel she called “the story of a great love and of a crime...Categorized as:
historical-fiction classics literary-fiction fiction feminism historical audiobook 20th-century -
![The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White]()
The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFollowing A Boy's Own Story (now a classic of American fiction) and his richly acclaimed The Beautiful Room Is Empty, here is the eagerly awaited final volume of Edmund White's groundbreaking autobiographical trilogy...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction satire 20th-century adult anthologies comedy -
![Portrait of a Marriage by Pearl S. Buck]()
Portrait of a Marriage by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBuck follows one woman's journey through a long-term marriage; its romanticized beginning, jolts of disillusionments and losses, and peace through acceptance and faith; as a metaphor for life...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction romance fiction historical 20th-century marriage -
![The Vivisector by Patrick White]()
The Vivisector by Patrick White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHurtle Duffield, a painter, coldly dissects the weaknesses of any and all who enter his circle. His sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion, the passionate illusions of the women who love him - all are used as fodder for his art...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction satire 20th-century adult book coming-of-age
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