Books like 'Too Loud a Solitude'
Readers who enjoyed Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsThe seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy... -
![Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado]()
Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsLiving by their wits in the steamy slums of Bahia, a gang of orphans and runaways, led by fifteen-year-old "Bullet," spend their time stealing from Brazil's rich and privileged until public outcry demands their capture...Categorized as:
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![The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges]()
The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsFull of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father’s “killer,” and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house... -
![The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov]()
The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSergei Dovlatov’s subtle, dark-edged humor and wry observations are in full force in The Suitcase as he examines eight objects—the items he brought with him in his luggage upon his emigration from the U.S.S.R...Categorized as:
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![Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, John Updike]()
Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, John Updike
Rated: 4.34 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsThe only available collection that brings together all of Kafka's storiesthose published during his lifetime and those released after his death...Categorized as:
classics drama dystopia humor literary-fiction magical-realism philosophical postmodernism -
![The Short Novels of John Steinbeck by John Steinbeck]()
The Short Novels of John Steinbeck by John Steinbeck
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsCollected here for the first time in a deluxe paperback volume are six of John Steinbeck's most widely read and beloved novels...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies contemporary fiction -
![The Complete Dramatic Works by Samuel Beckett]()
The Complete Dramatic Works by Samuel Beckett
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe present volume gathers all of Beckett's texts for theatre, from 1955 to 1984. It includes both the major dramatic works and the short and more compressed texts for the stage and for radio.'He believes in the cadence, the comma, the bite of word on reality, whatever else he believes; and his devotion to them, he makes clear, is a sufficient focus for the reader's attention...Categorized as:
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![Casa Tomada y Otros Cuentos by Julio Cortázar, Luisa Valenzuela]()
Casa Tomada y Otros Cuentos by Julio Cortázar, Luisa Valenzuela
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsWith an introduction by Luisa Valenzuela, this carefully selected anthology not only comprises Julio Cortazar's best short stories but also contains a study of the author's work by Anibal Jarkowski...Categorized as:
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![Cathedral by Raymond Carver]()
Cathedral by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsRaymond Carver’s third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. These twelve stories mark a turning point in Carver’s career and “overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life. . . . Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty. .Categorized as:
classics drama literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult anthologies -
![The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis]()
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsMaqroll the Gaviero (the Lookout) is one of the most alluring and memorable characters in the fiction of the last twenty-five years...Categorized as:
classics humor journey literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Noises Off by Michael Frayn]()
Noises Off by Michael Frayn
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNoises Off, the classic farce by the Tony Award—winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage “drama” that develops during Nothing On’s final rehearsal and tour... -
![Revenge of the Lawn / The Abortion / So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away by Richard Brautigan]()
Revenge of the Lawn / The Abortion / So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away by Richard Brautigan
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThree unforgettable Brautigan masterpieces reissued in a one-volume omnibus edition. REVENGE OF THE LAWN: Originally published in 1971, these bizarre flashes of insight and humor cover everything from "A High Building in Singapore" to the "Perfect California Day." This is Brautigan's only collection of stories and includes "The Lost Chapters of TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA...Categorized as:
historical-fiction humor literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies comedy -
![The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck]()
The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Grapes of Wrath / The Moon Is Down / Cannery Row / East of Eden / Of Mice and...Categorized as:
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![JR by William Gaddis]()
JR by William Gaddis
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJ R is the long-awaited novel from William Gaddis, author of The Recognitions, that tremendous book which, in the twenty years since its publication, has come to be acknowledged as an American masterpiece...Categorized as:
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![Correction by Thomas Bernhard]()
Correction by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsRoithamer, a character based on Wittgenstein, has committed suicide having been driven to madness by his own frightening powers of pure thought. We witness the gradual breakdown of a genius ceaselessly compelled to correct and refine his perceptions until the only logical conclusion is the negation of his own soul...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult book contemporary -
![Nostalgia by Mircea Cărtărescu]()
Nostalgia by Mircea Cărtărescu
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMircea Cartarescu, born in 1956, is one of Romania's leading novelists and poets...Categorized as:
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![The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov]()
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsFrom the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and 1950s, these sixty-five tales—eleven of which have been translated into English for the first time—display all the shades of Nabokov's imagination...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction humor literary-fiction magical-realism philosophical 20th-century -
![Beatles by Lars Saabye Christensen]()
Beatles by Lars Saabye Christensen
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBeatles is the story of Kim Karlsen and his three buddies, Gunnar, Ola and Seb - and, yes, they occasionally like to think of themselves as the Fab Four. They were born in 1951, and the story starts with the first wave of Beatlemania in Norway, in the spring of 1965...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook bildungsroman book -
![Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar]()
Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsHoracio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club...Categorized as:
classics drama journey literary-fiction magical-realism postmodernism 20th-century action-adventure -
![The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño]()
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsFirst published in Spanish in 1998, The Savage Detectives was immediately hailed as a critical success, wining the Herralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize. But with the 2007 English-language translation the book became more than a bestseller -- it began the global sensation of Bolanomania. New Year's Eve 1975, Mexico City...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction humor journey literary-fiction magical-realism postmodernism -
![On the Edge of Reason by Miroslav Krleža]()
On the Edge of Reason by Miroslav Krleža
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsDuring his long and distinguished career, the Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza (1893-1981) battled against many forms of tyranny. In On the Edge of Reason, his protagonist is a middle-aged lawyer whose life and career have been eminently respectable and respected. One evening, at a party attended by the local elite, he inadvertently blurts out an honest thought...Categorized as:
classics journey literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary -
![Old Masters: A Comedy by Thomas Bernhard]()
Old Masters: A Comedy by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsOld Masters (subtitled A Comedy) is a novel by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, which was first published in 1985. It tells of the life and opinions of Reger, a 'musical philosopher', through the voice of his acquaintance Atzbacher, a 'private academic'.The book is set in Vienna on one day around the year of its publication, 1985... -
![Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan]()
Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsFour gems, with new introductions, mark acclaimed Indian writer R. K. Narayan’s centennialIntroducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India “the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story...Categorized as:
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![Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec]()
Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLife: A User's Manual is an unclassified masterpiece, a sprawling compendium as encyclopedic as Dante's Commedia and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and, in its break with tradition, as inspiring as Joyce's Ulysses...Categorized as:
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![The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante]()
The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHenry Molise, a 50 year old, successful writer, returns to the family home to help with the latest drama; his aging parents want to divorce. Henry's tyrannical, brick laying father, Nick, though weak and alcoholic, can still strike fear into the hearts of his sons. His mother, though ill and devout to her Catholicism, still has the power to comfort and confuse her children... -
![The Burning Plain and Other Stories by Juan Rulfo]()
The Burning Plain and Other Stories by Juan Rulfo
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsA major figure in the history of post-Revolutionary literature in Mexico, Juan Rulfo received international acclaim for his brilliant short novel Pedro Paramo (1955) and his collection of short stories El llano en llamas (1953), translated as a collection here in English for the first time...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies -
![Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler]()
Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsEbullient and perverse, thrice married, Barney Panofsky has always clung to two cherished beliefs: life is absurd and nobody truly ever understands anybody else. But when his sworn enemy publicly states that Barney is a wife abuser, an intellectual fraud and probably a murderer, he is driven to write his own memoirs...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction humor literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
![Immortality by Milan Kundera]()
Immortality by Milan Kundera
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThis breathtaking, reverberating survey of human nature finds Kundera still attempting to work out the meaning of life, without losing his acute sense of humour. It is one of those great unclassifiable masterpieces that appear once every twenty years or so.'It will make you cleverer, maybe even a better lover. Not many novels can do that... -
![Darconville's Cat by Alexander Theroux]()
Darconville's Cat by Alexander Theroux
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe main story is a love affair between Alaric Darconville, an English professor at a Virginia women's college, and one of his students, Isabel.The style relies on complex syntax and unusual words. The satire is broad, and uses southern culture cliches but is often very funny. Some of the names of the girls at the school, for example, are Mimsy Borogoves, Barbara Celarent, and Pengwynn Custiss... -
![The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon]()
The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis first volume of The Collected Plays of Neil Simon contains the triumphs that put his unique brand of comic genius on the American stage, and made him the most successful playwright of his generation... -
![62: A Model Kit by Julio Cortázar]()
62: A Model Kit by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAs one of the main characters, the intellectual Juan, puts it: to one person the City might appear as Paris, to another it might be where one goes upon getting out of bed in Barcelona; to another it might appear as a beer hall in Oslo...Categorized as:
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![Teresa Batista, Cansada de Guerra by Jorge Amado]()
Teresa Batista, Cansada de Guerra by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt thirteen Tereza is sold by her aunt to a ranch owner who treats her like a piece of property, and sexually abuses her. When caught in bed with her lover she defends herself against the ranch owner’s violence with a knife and ends up in jail. Freed by a long-time admirer, she eventually ends up in a brothel...Categorized as:
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![Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, Joseph Farrell]()
Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, Joseph Farrell
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn its first two years of production, Dario Fo's controversial farce, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, was seen by over half a million people. It has since been performed all over the world and is widely recognised as a classic of modern drama... -
![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...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult anthologies -
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![What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe]()
What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIf Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie had ever managed to collaborate, they might have produced this shamelessly entertaining novel, which introduces readers to what may be the most powerful family in England--and is certainly the vilest. A tour de force of menace, malicious comedy, and torrential social bile, this book marks the American debut of an extraordinary writer...Categorized as:
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![Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan]()
Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsAn omnibus edition of three counterculture classics by Richard Brautigan that embody the spirit of the 1960s... -
![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... -
![The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai]()
The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsA powerful, surreal novel, in the tradition of Gogol, about the chaotic events surrounding the arrival of a circus in a small Hungarian town. The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town... -
![The Best of Saki by Saki]()
The Best of Saki by Saki
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 21 ratingsThe short stories of Saki give brief but dazzling glimpses into the lives of the Edwardian rich; a class that virtually disappeared with the advent of the First World War. With delicious malice, Saki portrays the follies, eloquence, tradition and foibles of his characters...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies comedy -
![Women and Men by Joseph McElroy]()
Women and Men by Joseph McElroy
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBeginning in childbirth and entered like a multiple dwelling in motion, Women and Men embraces and anatomizes the 1970s in New York from experiments in the chaotic relations between the sexes to the flux of the city itself...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult book contemporary -
![Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford, Ben Marcus]()
Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford, Ben Marcus
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsForty years ago I first linked up with Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas . . .So begins the courtship of a certain Unguentine to the woman we know only as “Mrs. Unguentine,” the chronicler of their sad, fantastical tale. For forty years, they sail the seas together, alone on a giant land-covered barge of their own devising...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction magical-realism philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult book -
![A School for Fools by Sasha Sokolov]()
A School for Fools by Sasha Sokolov
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsHailed by Nabokov as a masterpiece, Sokolov's first novel is set at a school for "disturbed" children outside Moscow...Categorized as:
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![The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story about the Hard Life by Flann O'Brien]()
The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story about the Hard Life by Flann O'Brien
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Poor Mouth relates the story of one Bonaparte O'Coonassa, born in a cabin in a fictitious village called Corkadoragha in western Ireland equally renowned for its beauty and the abject poverty of its residents. Potatoes constitute the basis of his family's daily fare, and they share both bed and board with the sheep and pigs... -
![War & War by László Krasznahorkai]()
War & War by László Krasznahorkai
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWar & War, László Krasznahorkai’s second novel in English from New Directions, begins at a point of danger: on a dark train platform Korim is on the verge of being attacked by thuggish teenagers and robbed; and from here, we are carried along by the insistent voice of this nervous clerk...Categorized as:
classics drama dystopia journey literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century -
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![The Yellow Arrow by Victor Pelevin]()
The Yellow Arrow by Victor Pelevin
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe main character, Andrei, is a passenger aboard the Yellow Arrow, who begins to despair over the trains ultimate destination and looks for a way out as the chapters count down. Indifferent to their fate, the other passengers carry on as usual — trading in nickel melted down fro the carriage doors, attending the Upper Bunk avant-garde theatre, and leafing through Pasternak’s Early Trains...Categorized as:
dystopia humor literary-fiction magical-realism postmodernism 20th-century adult alternate-history -
![Dear Shameless Death by Latife Tekin]()
Dear Shameless Death by Latife Tekin
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA strange magical story of a young girl growing up in modern Turkey, from her birth in a small rural village haunted by fairies and demons to hertraumatic move to the big city. It concentrates on the daughter's struggle gainst her overbearing mother and is both fantastic and hallucinatory...Categorized as:
journey literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult book contemporary female-author -
![Fup by Jim Dodge]()
Fup by Jim Dodge
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFirst published in 1983, this story is set in the coastal hills of Northern California between 1880 and the present. The tale revolves around three characters: two humans and one duck. Jim Dodge is the author of "Not Fade Away" and "Stone Junction"...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult animals audiobook -
![Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970 by Richard Brautigan]()
Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970 by Richard Brautigan
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA collection of 62 very short stories set in 1960s California, particularly around the author's home town of San Francisco. Richard Brautigan is the author of "Willard & His Bowling Trophies", "Trout Fishing in America", "In Watermelon Sugar" & "A Confederate General From Big Sur"...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult anthologies -
![The Loser by Thomas Bernhard]()
The Loser by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThomas Bernhard was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. His formal innovation ranks with Beckett and Kafka, his outrageously cantankerous voice recalls Dostoevsky, but his gift for lacerating, lyrical, provocative prose is incomparably his own...Categorized as:
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![Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau]()
Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe plot of Exercises in Style is simple: a man gets into an argument with another passenger on a bus. However, this anecdote is told 99 more times, each in a radically different style, as a sonnet, an opera, in slang, and with many more permutations. This virtuoso set of variations is a linguistic rust-remover, and a guide to literary forms...
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