Books like 'The Lost Steps'
Readers who enjoyed The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary 20th century action / adventure magical-realism classics literary-fiction historical-fiction journey
-
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsJorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, brilliantly translated by Andrew Hurley... -
![Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges]()
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... -
![The Little Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf, Yevgeny Petrov]()
The Little Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf, Yevgeny Petrov
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe name The Little Golden Calf comes from the Bible, the Book of Exodus 32:1-4 Delighted applause from both sides of the Atlantic greeted the first publication of this comic clasic about Soviet life in the early years after the Revolution. Social changes then were so drastic and came so thick and fast that even most Russians were confused...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![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:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book -
-
![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... -
![Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk]()
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSet in the mythical Polish village of Primeval, a microcosm of the world populated with eccentric, archetypal characters and guarded by four archangels, this novel from Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk chronicles the lives of the inhabitants over the course of the feral 20th century in prose that is forceful, direct, and the stylistic cousin of the magic realism in Gabriel García Márquez's One... -
![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:
classics journey literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure 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 journey literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
![The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies]()
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsThe complete volume of Robertson Davies's acclaimed trilogy, featuring Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Fifth Business Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and... -
![The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder]()
The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsHans Thomas and his father set out on a car trip through Europe, from Norway to Greece—the birthplace of philosophy—in search of Hans Thomas's mother, who left them many years earlier. On the way, Hans Thomas receives a mysterious miniature book—the fantastic memoir of a sailor shipwrecked in 1842 on a strange island where a deck of cards come to life... -
![Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó]()
Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen Ettie's husband dies, her daughter Iza insists that her mother give up the family house in the countryside and move to Budapest. Displaced from her community and her home, Ettie tries to find her place in this new life, but can't seem to get it right...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult aging -
![Água Viva by Clarice Lispector]()
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA meditation on the nature of life and time, Água Viva (1973) shows Lispector discovering a new means of writing about herself, more deeply transforming her individual experience into a universal poetry. In a body of work as emotionally powerful, formally innovative, and philosophically profound as Clarice Lispector’s, Água Viva stands out as a particular triumph...Categorized as:
classics journey literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![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... -
![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 journey literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
-
![Hourglass by Danilo Kiš]()
Hourglass by Danilo Kiš
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDanilo Kiš was one of the most artful and eloquent writers of postwar Europe. Of all his books, Hourglass, the account of the final months in one man's life before he is sent to a concentration camp, is considered to be his masterpiece...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![The Truce by Mario Benedetti]()
The Truce by Mario Benedetti
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratings'Perhaps that moment had been exceptional, but still, I felt alive. That pressure on my chest means being alive.' Forty-nine, with a kind face, no serious ailments (apart from varicose veins on his ankles), a good salary, and three moody children, widowed accountant Martín Santomé is about to retire. He assumes he'll take up gardening, or the guitar, or whatever retired people generally do...Categorized as:
classics journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![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... -
![Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse]()
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsSteppenwolf is a poetical self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope... -
![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... -
![The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt]()
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHelen DeWitt's extraordinary debut, The Last Samurai, centers on the relationship between Sibylla, a single mother of precocious and rigorous intelligence, and her son, who, owing to his mother's singular attitude to education, develops into a prodigy of learning... -
![Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb]()
Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA major classic of 1930s literature, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight (Utas és Holdvilág) is the fantastically moving and darkly funny story of a bourgeois businessman torn between duty and desire.'On the train, everything seemed fine. The trouble began in Venice ...'Mihály has dreamt of Italy all his life...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati]()
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsOften likened to Kafka's The Castle, The Tartar Steppe is both a scathing critique of military life and a meditation on the human thirst for glory. It tells of young Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe... -
![The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa]()
The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSet among a community of cadets in a Lima military school, it is notable for its experimental and complex employment of multiple perspectives. The novel was so accurate in its portraiture of the academy that the academy's authorities burned one thousand copies and condemned the book as a plan by Ecuador to denigrate Peru...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult bildungsroman book -
![On the Road: the Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac]()
On the Road: the Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published as Kerouac originally composed it IN THREE WEEKS in April of 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his first full draft of On the Road—typed as a single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper, which he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll...Categorized as:
classics journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
-
![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... -
![The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch]()
The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsHarry Mulisch's magnum opus, is a rich mosaic of twentieth-century trauma in which many themes—friendship, loyalty, family, art, technology, religion, fate, good, and evil—suffuse a suspenseful and resplendent narrative.The Discovery of Heaven begins with the meeting of Onno and Max, two complicated individuals whom fate has mysteriously and magically brought together... -
![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)... -
![The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, Jefferson Mays]()
The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, Jefferson Mays
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe definitive edition of Calvino’s cosmicomics, bringing together all of these enchanting stories—including some never before translated—in one volume for the first timeIn Italo Calvino’s cosmicomics, primordial beings cavort on the nearby surface of the moon, play marbles with atoms, and bear ecstatic witness to Earth’s first dawn...Categorized as:
classics journey literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
![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... -
![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... -
![Spring Magic by D.E. Stevenson]()
Spring Magic by D.E. Stevenson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTwenty-five year old Frances Field wanted desperately to get away from her guardians' dull London townhouse. Unforeseen circumstances finally gave her the chance to escape. She decided for the first time in her life to go off on her own, to a quiet fishing village in Scotland... -
![I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch]()
I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsArrested and imprisoned in a small Swiss town, a prisoner begins this book with an exclamation: "I'm not Stiller!" He claims that his name is Jim White, that he has been jailed under false charges and under the wrong identity...Categorized as:
classics journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book contemporary -
![Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer]()
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe conned: an Oxford don, a revered society physician, a chic French art dealer, and a charming English lord. They have one thing in common. Overnight, each novice investor lost his life's fortune to one man. The con: Harvey Metcalfe!!A brilliant, self-made guru of deceit. A very dangerous individual. And now, a hunted man...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges]()
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsJorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious... -
-
![If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino]()
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsItalo Calvino's masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, in which the reader of the book becomes the book's central character... -
![House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk]()
House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe English translation of the prize-winning international bestseller Winner of the Gunter Grass PrizeNowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, an area that has been a part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia in the past. When the narrator moves into the area, she discovers everyone--and everything--has a story... -
![The Encyclopedia of the Dead by Danilo Kiš]()
The Encyclopedia of the Dead by Danilo Kiš
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAn entrancing, otherworldly collection of short stories from one of Europe's most accomplished 20th century writers, new to Penguin Modern ClassicsA counter-prophet attempts the impossible to prove his power; a girl sees the hideous fate of her sisters and father in a mirror bought from a gypsy; the death of a prostitute causes an unanticipated uprising; and the lives of every ordinary person... -
![The Bone People by Keri Hulme]()
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsIntegrating both Maori myth and New Zealand reality, The Bone People became the most successful novel in New Zealand publishing history when it appeared in 1984. Set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand, a harsh environment, the novel chronicles the complicated relationships between three emotional outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage... -
![A Heart So White by Javier Marías]()
A Heart So White by Javier Marías
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.Javier Marías's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![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... -
![Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto]()
Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAs the civil war rages in 1980s Mozambique, an old man and a young boy, refugees from the war, seek shelter in a burnt-out bus. Among the effects of a dead passenger, they come across a set of notebooks that tell of his life. As the boy reads the story to his elderly companion, this story and their own develop in tandem... -
![Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector]()
Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNear to the Wild Heart is Clarice Lispector's first novel, written from March to November 1942 and published around her twenty-third birthday...Categorized as:
classics journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![In His Own Write by John Lennon]()
In His Own Write by John Lennon
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAbout The Awful I was bored on the 9th of Octover 1940 when, I believe, the Nasties were still booming us led by Madolf Heatlump (who only had one). Anyway they didn't get me. I attended to varicous schools in Liddypol. And still didn't pass—much to my Aunties supplies...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book comedy contemporary -
![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... -
-
![Red Crosses by Sasha Filipenko]()
Red Crosses by Sasha Filipenko
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSasha Filipenko traces the arc of Russian history from Stalin's terror to the present day, in a novel full of heart and humanity.One struggles not to forget, while the other would like nothing better. Tatiana Alexeyevna is an old woman, over ninety, rich in lived experience, and suffering from Alzheimer's. Every day, she loses a few more of her irreplaceable memories...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey fiction contemporary politics audiobook war -
![The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera]()
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsRich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970's. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than just its historical implications... -
![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)... -
![The Fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampâté Bâ]()
The Fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampâté Bâ
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Fortunes of WangrinAmadou Hampâté BâTranslated by Aina Pavolini Taylor with an Introduction by F. Abiola IreleWinner of the Grand Prix Litteraire de l'Afrique Noire"I think this is perhaps the best African novel on colonialism and it draws very richly on various modes of oral literature...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey classics fiction 20th-century contemporary action-adventure black-mc -
![Leaves of the Banyan Tree by Albert Wendt]()
Leaves of the Banyan Tree by Albert Wendt
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAn epic spanning three generations, Leaves of the Banyan Tree tells the story of a family and community in Western Samoa, exploring on a grand scale such universal themes as greed, corruption, colonialism, exploitation, and revenge. Winner of the 1980 New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award, it is considered a classic work of Pacific literature...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey classics fiction 20th-century male-author family -
![Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez]()
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsA man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place twenty-seven years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.
