Books like 'Wittgenstein's Nephew'
Readers who enjoyed Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard 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:
classics literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult audiobook book contemporary -
![Collected Stories by Raymond Carver]()
Collected Stories by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.57 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRaymond Carver’s spare dramas of loneliness, despair, and troubled relationships breathed new life into the American short story of the 1970s and ’80s. In collections such as Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Carver wrote with unflinching exactness about men and women enduring lives on the knife-edge of poverty and other deprivations...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary crime -
![The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever]()
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHere are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called "the greatest generation." From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in "The Enormous Radio" to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" and "The Swimmer," Cheever tells us everything we need to know about "the pain and sweetness of life...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
![Buddha's Little Finger by Victor Pelevin]()
Buddha's Little Finger by Victor Pelevin
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRussian novelist Victor Pelevin is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most brilliant young writers at work today. His comic inventiveness and mind-bending talent prompted Time magazine to proclaim him a "psychedelic Nabokov for the cyber-age...Categorized as:
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![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:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary drama -
![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 literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult aging book -
![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:
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![Suttree by Cormac McCarthy]()
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsArguably the masterpiece of a novelist as highly praised and scarcely read as any living writer, the Vintage Contemporaries reprint of Suttree should help to bring McCarthy the readers to match his many awards and voluminous reviews... -
![Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley, Christopher Hitchens]()
Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley, Christopher Hitchens
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsThe astonishing novel Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's vision of the future--of a world utterly transformed. Through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, people are genetically designed to be passive and therefore consistently useful to the ruling class...Categorized as:
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![What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies]()
What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsFrancis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, an expert art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis's life were not always what they seemed...Categorized as:
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![Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie]()
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fairy-tale -
![Demian by Hermann Hesse]()
Demian by Hermann Hesse
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 61 ratingsEmil Sinclair is a young boy raised in a bourgeois home, amidst what is described as a Scheinwelt, a play on words that means "world of light" as well as "world of illusion". Emil's entire existence can be summarized as a struggle between two worlds: the show world of illusion (related to the Hindu concept of maya) and the real world, the world of spiritual truth... -
![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:
classics literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
![Fear by Stefan Zweig]()
Fear by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFinding her comfortable bourgeois existence as wife and mother predictable after eight years of marriage, Irene Wagner brings a little excitement into it by starting an affair with a rising young pianist. Her lover’s former mistress begins blackmailing her, threatening to give her secret away to her husband. Irene is soon in the grip of agonizing fear... -
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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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![Letter from an Unknown Woman: The Fowler Snared by Stefan Zweig]()
Letter from an Unknown Woman: The Fowler Snared by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThis story of distorted passion and behaviour reveals the unrequited love of a woman for a man who cares so little for her that he fails to recognize her as she obsessively pursues him. Also included is The Fowler Snared, sharing a similar theme, only it is the man whose passion is unrequited...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book contemporary -
![The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, Theodore Ziolkowski]()
The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, Theodore Ziolkowski
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsThe final novel of Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature.Set in the twenty-third century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish... -
![The Lime Works: A Novel (Vintage International) by Thomas Bernhard]()
The Lime Works: A Novel (Vintage International) by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFor five years, Konrad has imprisoned himself and his crippled wife in an abandoned lime works where he’s conducted odd auditory experiments and prepared to write his masterwork, The Sense of Hearing. As the story begins, he’s just blown the head off his wife with the Mannlicher carbine she kept strapped to her wheelchair... -
![What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg]()
What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhat Makes Sammy Run?Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symp-toms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anti-hero book comedy -
![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 20th-century audiobook book contemporary fiction high-school -
![The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth]()
The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis novel in verse about a group of California yuppies was one of the most highly praised books of 1986 and a bestseller on both coasts...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary fiction -
![A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood]()
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, determined to persist in the routines of his daily life...Categorized as:
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![The Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
The Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratings'The Wall', the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor--seemingly there for the men's solace--their mental descent is charted in exquisite, often harrowing detail...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult audiobook book contemporary -
![Of Mice and Mooshaber by Ladislav Fuks, Mark Corner]()
Of Mice and Mooshaber by Ladislav Fuks, Mark Corner
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLadislav Fuks (1923-94) was an outstanding Czech writer whose work, consisting primarily of psychological fiction, explores themes of anxiety and life in totalitarian systems... -
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![The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and the Stories by Nella Larsen, Marita Golden]()
The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and the Stories by Nella Larsen, Marita Golden
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA light-skinned beauty who spends years passing for white finds herself dangerously drawn to an old friend's Harlem neighborhood. A restless young mulatto tries desperately to find a comfortable place in a world in which she sees herself as a perpetual outsider. A mother's confrontation with tragedy tests her loyalty to her race...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies black-mc contemporary -
![The Knot of Vipers by François Mauriac, David Lodge]()
The Knot of Vipers by François Mauriac, David Lodge
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe masterpiece of one of the greatest modern Catholic writersthe divine grace that remains available to each of us until the very moment of our deaths. It is the unforgettable tale of the battle for one man's soul...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book christian -
![A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley]()
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrederick Exley's inimitable "fictional memoir" A Fan's Notes has assumed the status of a classic since its first publication in 1968. Mordantly and poignantly, Exley describes the profound failures of his life; professional, sexual, and personal...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book comedy contemporary -
![Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro]()
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**A woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband's past - and instead discovering unsettling truths about a total stranger...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
![Rock Springs by Richard Ford]()
Rock Springs by Richard Ford
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn these ten stories, Ford mines literary gold from the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American West--and from the guarded hopes and gnawing loneliness of the people who live there. Rock Springs is a masterpiece of taut narration, cleanly chiseled prose, and empathy so generous that it feels like a kind of grace...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
![Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai]()
Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe novella that first propelled Dazai into the literary elite of post-war Japan. Essentially the start of Dazai's career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them--a theme that occupied Dazai's life both personally and professionally...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century book contemporary drama -
![One, No One and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello]()
One, No One and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe great Pirandello's (1867-1936) 1926 novel, previously published here in 1933 in another translation, synthesizes the themes and personalities that illuminate such dramas as Six Characters in Search of an Author... -
![The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir]()
The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThree long stories that draw the reader into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary drama -
![World of Wonders by Robertson Davies]()
World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsHailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book coming-of-age contemporary -
![The Joke by Milan Kundera]()
The Joke by Milan Kundera
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe authoritative version of the brilliant first novel by the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A great novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried, in a completely revised translation that is nothing less than the restoration of a classic...Categorized as:
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![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 literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book contemporary -
![Birdy by William Wharton]()
Birdy by William Wharton
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHailed upon its publication as "a classic for readers not yet born" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel about friendship and family, dreaming and surviving, love and war, madness and beauty, and, above all, "birdness...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult animals audiobook book -
![Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti]()
Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Auto-da-Fé" is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Vienna between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destruction... -
![Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro]()
Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
![The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore]()
The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings'The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne' launched Brian Moore's distinguished literary career and also – because of his sensitive portrayal of her – enshrined Judith Hearne in the gallery of literature's unforgettable women. A penetrating, comic, tragic tale of a plain woman, it is a novel that occasionally sings with the lilt of the Irish greats...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary drama -
![Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Duncker]()
Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Duncker
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn intricate and self-reflective novel about that most delicate of relationships--meaning the one between writers and readers. The narrator, an anonymous graduate student, sets off on the trail of a French novelist named Paul Michel, who is currently confined to an asylum...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult book contemporary female-author fiction -
![In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories by William H. Gass]()
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories by William H. Gass
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIN THIS SUITE of five short pieces -- one of the unqualified literary masterpieces of the American 1960s -- William Gass finds five beautiful forms in which to explore the signature theme of his fiction: the solitary soul’s poignant, conflicted, and doomed pursuit of love and community...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary family -
![Nightwork by Irwin Shaw]()
Nightwork by Irwin Shaw
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA dead man’s briefcase presents a down-on-his-luck pilot with the chance of a lifetime.Pilot Douglas Grimes’s best days are long behind him. Grounded due to a medical condition, Douglas has resigned himself to menial work as a desk clerk at a seedy hotel. But his fortune flips when he discovers a hotel guest dead from a heart attack and, next to him, a tube jammed with hundred-dollar bills...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book contemporary -
![Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant, Lorna Raver]()
Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant, Lorna Raver
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsMavis Gallant is an undisputed master of the short story whose peerless prose captures the range of human experience while evoking time and place with unequaled skill. This new collection of 15 of Gallant's stories, edited by best-selling author Michael Ondaatje, gathers the best of her many stories set in Europe and Paris, where Gallant has long lived...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook british-isles -
![A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing]()
A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOne of Doris Lessing's most important novels -- here beautifully repackaged This is the second volume in Doris Lessing's renowned quartet of novels tracing the life of Martha Quest from her childhood in Africa to an imagined post-nuclear Britain. A Proper Marriage sees twenty-something Martha beginning to realise that her marriage has been a terrible mistake... -
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![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... -
![Aurélia and Other Writings by Gérard de Nerval]()
Aurélia and Other Writings by Gérard de Nerval
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAurelia is French poet and novelist Gerard de Nerval's account of his descent into madness--a condition provoked in part by his unrequited passion for an actress named Jenny Colon...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
![Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati]()
Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn Catastrophe, the renowned Italian short story writer Dino Buzzati brings vividly to life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known, everyday world. In stories touched by the fantastical and the strange, and filled with humor, irony, and menace, Buzzati illuminates the nightmarish side of our ordinary existence...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction horror -
![White Walls: Collected Stories by Tatyana Tolstaya]()
White Walls: Collected Stories by Tatyana Tolstaya
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTatyana Tolstaya's short stories — with their unpredictable fairy-tale plots, appealingly eccentric characters, and stylistic abundance and flair — established her in the 1980s as one of modern Russia's finest writers. Since then her work has been translated throughout the world. Edna O'Brien has called Tolstaya "an enchantress." Anita Desai has spoken of her work's "richness and ardent life...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies contemporary female-author -
![Ishmael by Daniel Quinn]()
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsWinner of the 1992 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, "Ishmael" is a unique and captivating novel that has earned a large and passionate following among readers and critics worldwide... -
![On Love by Alain de Botton]()
On Love by Alain de Botton
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life" we are told at the outset of Alain de Botton's On Love, a hip, charming, and devastatingly witty rumination on the thrills and pitfalls of romantic love. The narrator is smitten by Chloe on a Paris-London flight, and by the time they've reached the luggage carousel, he knows he is in love...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult audiobook book contemporary
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