Books like 'The Unfortunates'
Readers who enjoyed The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"There is a distinguished mind at work beneath the totally acceptable dullness of clerking. The mind is that of Pessoa. We must be given the chance to learn more about him...Categorized as:
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![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 literary-fiction realistic 20th-century anthologies contemporary drama 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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![The Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens]()
The Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThis definitive poetry collection, originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens on his 75th birthday, contains:- "Harmonium"- "Ideas of Order"- "The Man With the Blue Guitar"- "Parts of the World"- "Transport Summer"- "The Auroras of Autumn"- "The...Categorized as:
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![The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates]()
The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsRichard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate and accomplished writers of America's post-war generation...Categorized as:
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![The Collected Poems, 1957-1987 by Octavio Paz]()
The Collected Poems, 1957-1987 by Octavio Paz
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNobel Laureate Octavio Paz is incontestably Latin America's foremost poet. The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz is a landmark bilingual gathering of all the poetry he has published in book form since 1952, the year of his premier long poem, Sunstone (Piedra de Sol)―here translated anew by Eliot Weinberger―made its appearance...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:
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![The Collected Stories by Lorrie Moore]()
The Collected Stories by Lorrie Moore
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsSince the publication of Self-Help, her first collection of stories, Lorrie Moore has been hailed as one of the greatest and most influential voices in American fiction...Categorized as:
literary-fiction classics fiction contemporary humor female-author anthologies 20th-century -
![All Fires the Fire by Julio Cortázar]()
All Fires the Fire by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsCortazar's stories are like small time pieces, where each polished part moves relentlessly on its own particular path, exercising a crucial and perpetual influence on the mechanism as a whole...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
![What Work Is by Philip Levine]()
What Work Is by Philip Levine
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWinner of the National Book Award in 1991 “This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America. These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin’s First-Rate Plumbing and Plating...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
![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:
classics literary-fiction postmodernism 20th-century adult book contemporary fiction -
![Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader by Charles Bukowski]()
Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe best of Bukowski's novels, stories, and poems, this collection reads like an autobiography, relating the extraordinary story of his life and offering a sometimes harrowing, invariably exhilarating reading experience. A must for this counterculture idol's legion of fans...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary female-mc fiction -
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![Bestiary: The Selected Stories of Julio Cortázar by Julio Cortázar]()
Bestiary: The Selected Stories of Julio Cortázar by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsA collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style.A grieving family home becomes the site of a terrifying invasion. A frustrated love triangle, brought together by a plundered Aztec idol, spills over into brutality. A lodger’s inability to stop vomiting bunny rabbits inspires a personal confession...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction postmodernism 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
![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 literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary earth -
![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...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult book contemporary fiction -
![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... -
![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:
classics literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult book comedy -
![The Dream Songs by John Berryman]()
The Dream Songs by John Berryman
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis edition combines The Dream Songs, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1965, and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1969 and contains all 385 songs. Of The Dream Songs, A. Alvarez wrote in The Observer, "A major achievement. He has written an elegy on his brilliant generation and, in the process, he has also written an elegy on himself... -
![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 Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector]()
The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAficionados of South American fiction as well as literary critics will welcome this posthumous translation of a nearly plotless novel by one of Brazil's foremost writers. Availing herself of a single character, Lispector transforms a banal situation—a woman at home, alone—into an amphitheater for philosophical investigations...Categorized as:
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![Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar]()
Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA young girl spends her summer vacation in a country house where a tiger roams . . . A man reading a mystery finds out too late that he is the murderer's victim . .Categorized as:
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![Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams]()
Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOpening with Professor Tomlinson's superbly clear and helpful introduction this selection reflects the most up-to-date Williams scholarship. In addition to including many more pieces, Tomlinson has organized the whole in chronological order...Categorized as:
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![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...Categorized as:
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![The Recognitions by William Gaddis]()
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsWyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate originals - pictures the painters themselves might have envied...Categorized as:
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![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...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction postmodernism 20th-century adult book contemporary dark-academia -
![The Complete Stories by Bernard Malamud]()
The Complete Stories by Bernard Malamud
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBERNARD MALAMUD (1914-86) is considered a modern master of the short story, ranked with Chekhov and Isaac Babel...Categorized as:
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![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:
classics literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult book contemporary -
![War All the Time by Charles Bukowski]()
War All the Time by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWar All the Time is a selection of poetry from the early 1980s. Charles Bukowski shows that he is still as pure as ever but he has evolved into a slightly happier man that has found some fame and love. These poems show how he grapples with his past and future colliding... -
![Elephant and Other Stories by Raymond Carver]()
Elephant and Other Stories by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThese seven stories were the last that Carver wrote. Among them is Errand in which he imagines the death of Chekhov, a writer Carver hugely admired and to whose work his own was often compared...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary fiction -
![Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel]()
Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIt is always "earthquake weather" in Amy Hempel's California, a landscape where everything can change without warning. Traditional resources—home, parents, lovers, friends, even willpower—are not dependable. And so the characters in these short, compelling stories have learned to depend on small triumphs of wit, irony, and spirit...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary female-author fiction -
![Concrete by Thomas Bernhard]()
Concrete by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsInstead of the book he's meant to write, Rudolph, a Viennese musicologist, produces this tale of procrastination, failure, and despair, a dark and grotesquely funny story of small woes writ large and profound horrors detailed and rehearsed to the point of distraction."Certain books—few—assert literary importance instantly, profoundly...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult book contemporary -
![Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories by Raymond Carver]()
Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMore than sixty stories, poems, and essays are included in this wide-ranging collection by the extravagantly versatile Raymond Carver. Two of the stories—later revised for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love—are particularly notable in that between the first and the final versions, we see clearly the astounding process of Carver’s literary development... -
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![The Collected Stories by Grace Paley]()
The Collected Stories by Grace Paley
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis reissue of Grace Paley's classic collection—a finalist for the National Book Award—demonstrates her rich use of language as well as her extraordinary insight into and compassion for her characters, moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult anthologies comedy contemporary -
![The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic]()
The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWinner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry “One of the truly imaginative writers of our time.” — Los Angles Times Book Review You never know what Charles Simic is up to until you reach the end of the line or the bottom of the paragraph. Waiting for you might be a kiss. Or a bludgeon. A smile at the absurdities of society, or a wistful, grim memory of World War II. He puns, pulls pranks... -
![A Clean Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway]()
A Clean Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway, first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1933; it was also included in his collection Winner Take Nothing (1933).James Joyce once remarked: "He [Hemingway] has reduced the veil between literature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have you read 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place'?... It is masterly...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction realistic 20th-century audiobook book contemporary fiction -
![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:
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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... -
![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:
literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult book contemporary fiction -
![1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray]()
1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings1982, Janine is a liberal novel of the most satisfying kind. Set over the course of one night inside the head of Jock McLeish, an aging, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations, as he tipples in the bedroom of a small Scottish hotel, it makes an unanswerable case that republicanism is a state of absolute spiritual bankruptcy...Categorized as:
literary-fiction postmodernism classics philosophical europe british-isles united-kingdom scotland -
![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:
classics literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult book contemporary -
![Zenobia by Gellu Naum]()
Zenobia by Gellu Naum
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOne of the best-known novels by prolific Romanian avant-garde writer Gelu Naum, Zenobia is the evocation of the singular quest of a Surrealist knight-errant who strives to be true to the gentle demands of his lady in a landscape of snares, desolation, incipient madness, and material poverty magically interrupted by moments of extreme beauty... -
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![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 literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century 21st-century adult book -
![Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories by Grace Paley]()
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories by Grace Paley
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSeventeen stories written over the past fifteen years reveal the author's vision of human love and tragedy...Categorized as:
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![Selected Stories by Robert Walser, Susan Sontag]()
Selected Stories by Robert Walser, Susan Sontag
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsHow to place the mysterious Swiss writer Robert Walser, a humble genius who possessed one of the most elusive and surprising sensibilities in modern literature? Walser is many things: a Paul Klee in words, maker of droll, whimsical, tender, and heartbreaking verbal artifacts; an inspiration to such very different writers as Kafka and W.G...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
![Short Cuts: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver]()
Short Cuts: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe nine stories and one poem collected in this volume formed the basis for the astonishingly original film “Short Cuts” directed by Robert Altman. Collected altogether in this volume, these stories form a searing and indelible portrait of American innocence and loss...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
![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 literary-fiction philosophical postmodernism 20th-century adult anthologies comedy -
![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...
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