Books like 'Notebooks'
Readers who enjoyed Notebooks by Emil M. Cioran also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
psychological existentialism nihilism
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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... -
![Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsSet in mid 19th-century Russia, Demons examines the effect of a charismatic but unscrupulous self-styled revolutionary leader on a group of credulous followers... -
![Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, William T. Vollmann]()
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, William T. Vollmann
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsLouis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism... -
![The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis collection, unique to the Modern Library, gathers seven of Dostoevsky's key works and shows him to be equally adept at the short story as with the novel...Categorized as:
existentialism anthologies classics fiction historical literary literary-fiction philosophical -
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![Notes from Underground & The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
Notes from Underground & The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA single, tormented, character dominates both of these short novels written at different stages of Dostoyevsky's career..Title: .Notes from Underground the Double..Author: .Dostoyevsky, Fyodor..Publisher: .Penguin Group USA..Publication Date: .1972/06/01..Number of Pages: .287..Binding Type: .PAPERBACK..Library of Congress:... -
![Nobel Prize for Literature Classics: The Stranger, the Plague by Albert Camus]()
Nobel Prize for Literature Classics: The Stranger, the Plague by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSimplified Chinese edition of two of the best of Albert Camus: The Stranger, The Plague. In Simplified Chinese. Annotation copyright Tsai Fong Books, Inc. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc... -
![The Double and The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
The Double and The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have given us the definitive version of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s strikingly original short novels, The Double and The Gambler...Categorized as:
existentialism adult anthologies classics fiction literary literary-fiction philosophical -
![Eternal Husband, And Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
Eternal Husband, And Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA rich and idle man confronts his dead mistress's husband in this psychological novel of duality. One of the esteemed Russian author's most powerful and accessible tales, it employs his favorite themes of mental torture and neurosis. Captivating and highly revealing, it explores love, guilt, and hatred...Categorized as:
existentialism anthologies classics fiction literary literary-fiction philosophical philosophy -
![The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot]()
The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper." 'The Hollow Men' is a poem by T. S. Eliot written in 1925, divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines. Eliot's New York Times obituary in 1965 identified the final four as "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English"...Categorized as:
existentialism classics fiction 20th-century historical philosophy psychological university -
![The Fall by Albert Camus]()
The Fall by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsElegantly styled, Camus' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer's confessions is a searing study of modern amorality... -
![Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsDostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence... -
![Crave by Sarah Kane]()
Crave by Sarah Kane
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in an unnamed city from which voices and images spring, Crave charts the disintegration of a human mind under the pressures of love, loss and desire.Produced by Paines Plough and Bright Ltd (Guy Chapman and Paul Spyker), Crave premiered at the Traverse Theatre for the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. It received its English premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London in September 1998... -
![The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev]()
The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSergey did not know that the colonel, having locked himself all the previous night in his little study, had deliberated upon this ritual with all his power. "We must not aggravate, but ease the last moments of our son," resolved the colonel firmly, and he carefully weighed every possible phase of the conversation, every act and movement that might take place on the following day... -
![Mysteries by Knut Hamsun]()
Mysteries by Knut Hamsun
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMysteries (1892) is the story of Johan Nilsen Nagel, a mysterious stranger who suddenly turns up in a small Norwegian town one summer-and just as suddenly disappears. Nagel is a complete outsider, a sort of modern Christ treated in a spirit of near parody...Categorized as:
existentialism 20th-century anthologies classics europe fiction historical historical-fiction -
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![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... -
![Caligula by Albert Camus]()
Caligula by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsa new adaptation of Camus' 1944 play by Scottish playwright David...Categorized as:
existentialism nihilism 20th-century adult ancient-civilization audiobook book classics -
![Molloy by Samuel Beckett]()
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMolloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt), and two years later by The Unnamable (L’Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience... -
![Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev]()
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsBazarov—a gifted, impatient, and caustic young man—has journeyed from school to the home of his friend Arkady Kirsanov. But soon Bazarov’s outspoken rejection of authority and social conventions touches off quarrels, misunderstandings, and romantic entanglements that will utterly transform the Kirsanov household and reflect the changes taking place across all of nineteenth-century Russia... -
![The Dream Of A Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
The Dream Of A Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsThis scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages... -
![White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsWhite Nights, is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published in 1848. Set in St. Petersburg, this is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it delves into the torment and guilt of unrequited love. Both protagonists suffer from a deep sense of alienation that initially brings them together... -
![The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSet in France during the days immediately before World War II, this is the story of Mathieu, a French professor of philosophy obsessed with the idea of freedom. Translated from the French by Eric Sutton... -
![Leave Society by Tao Lin]()
Leave Society by Tao Lin
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA bold portrait of a writer working to balance all his lives—as an artist, a son, and a loner. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.In 2014, a novelist named Li leaves Manhattan to visit his parents in Taipei for ten weeks. He doesn't know it yet, but his life will begin to deepen and complexify on this trip...Categorized as:
existentialism fiction contemporary literary-fiction philosophy 21st-century substance-abuse family -
![Abel Sanchez and Other Stories by Miguel de Unamuno]()
Abel Sanchez and Other Stories by Miguel de Unamuno
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a... -
![Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsNausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him... -
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![Spadework for a Palace by László Krasznahorkai]()
Spadework for a Palace by László Krasznahorkai
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSpadework for a Palace bears the subtitle “Entering the Madness of Others” and offers an epigraph: “Reality is no obstacle.” Indeed...Categorized as:
existentialism fiction contemporary literary-fiction humor philosophy urban psychological -
![La coscienza di Zeno. Senilità. Una vita by Italo Svevo]()
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![Motherland Hotel by Yusuf Atılgan]()
Motherland Hotel by Yusuf Atılgan
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 20 ratings"My heroes are Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Oguz Atay, and Yusuf Atilgan. I have become a novelist by following their footsteps . . . I love Yusuf Atilgan; he manages to remain local although he benefits from Faulkner's works and the Western traditions... -
![The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe narrator and protagonist of Dostoevsky’s novel The Adolescent (first published in English as A Raw Youth) is Arkady Dolgoruky, a naive 19-year-old boy bursting with ambition and opinions. The illegitimate son of a dissipated landowner, he is torn between his desire to expose his father’s wrongdoing and the desire to win his love. He travels to St...Categorized as:
existentialism 20th-century adult audiobook bildungsroman book classics coming-of-age -
![Contempt by Alberto Moravia, Tim Parks]()
Contempt by Alberto Moravia, Tim Parks
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsContempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous ~~ his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage... -
![The Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson]()
The Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsWilson probably has earned a reputation more as a scholar & biographer than as a novelist; but this novel, originally published in 1969, proves that he possesses significant skills in the area of fiction as well... -
![The Gentle Spirit by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
The Gentle Spirit by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"The Gentle Spirit" (Russian: Кроткая, Krotkaya), sometimes also translated as "The Meek One", is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1876. The piece comes with the subtitle of "A Fantastic Story", and it chronicles the relationship between a pawnbroker and a girl that frequents his shop. It masterfully depicts desperation, greed, manipulation and suicide... -
![The Gentle Spirit by Fyodor Dostoevsky]()
The Gentle Spirit by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn this compelling study of despair, based on a real-life incident, a pawnbroker mourns the loss of his wife, a quiet, gentle young girl. Why has she killed herself? Could he have prevented it? These are the questions the pawnbroker asks himself as he pieces together past events and minor incidents, changes of mood and passing glances, in his search for an answer that will relieve his torment... -
![Ritual in the Dark by Colin Wilson]()
Ritual in the Dark by Colin Wilson
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsCOLIN WILSON'S CLASSIC NOVEL OF CONTEMPORARY MURDER A wave of sickening deaths hits the streets of modern London. Young women, mainly prostitutes, are found strangled and mutilated. The police are baffled, the press outraged - not since Jack the Ripper has such a sinister brand of violent murders been unleashed... -
![Happy Ever After by Matt Shaw]()
Happy Ever After by Matt Shaw
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIf it's just you and me, together, for the rest of our lives - no-one else to mess things up... could you ever love me?Peter loves Vanessa. He loves her a lot and is looking forward to starting a nice life with her, and only her. No one else to get in the way and mess up their beautiful relationship. He'll do anything for her. Absolutely anything to make her happy...Categorized as:
existentialism horror dark splatterpunk graphic-violence fiction psychological contemporary -
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![Boredom by Alberto Moravia]()
Boredom by Alberto Moravia
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe novels that the great Italian writer Alberto Moravia wrote in the years following the Second World War represent an extraordinary survey of the range of human behavior in a fragmented modern society... -
![The God of the Labyrinth by Colin Wilson]()
The God of the Labyrinth by Colin Wilson
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"We have to master the strange trick of allowing the body to remain quiescent, while pushing the mind to explore interior savannahs and mountain ranges." —Colin WilsonGerard Sorme, the narrator of this fast-paced novel, sets out to master this trick... -
![During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present by Brandon Scott Gorrell]()
During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present by Brandon Scott Gorrell
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsPoetry. Brandon Scott Gorrell's debut full-length poetry book captures the feelings of small, alienated, and highly self-conscious humans who exist in an array of situations, from a very odd Halloween party to a full-scale planetary war involving humans, androids, robots, and aliens... -
![Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse]()
Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse
Rated: 3.84 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsIn Hermann Hesse's Beneath the Wheel or The Prodigy, Hans Giebenrath lives among the dull and respectable townsfolk of a sleepy Black Forest village. When he is discovered to be an exceptionally gifted student, the entire community presses him onto a path of serious scholarship... -
![Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus, Orhan Pamuk]()
Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus, Orhan Pamuk
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity...Categorized as:
existentialism 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook classics contemporary fiction -
![The Burrow by Franz Kafka]()
The Burrow by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Burrow is an incomplete narrative by Franz Kafka, written 1923-1924, and published posthumously in the magazine Witiko in 1931 by Max Brod. It tells of an animal’s futile struggle to perfect the defence of his giant burrow against enemies. The narrative deals with becoming entangled in obsessive observation of a self-created labyrinth-like construct that causes heightened paranoia... -
![Three Exemplary Novels by Miguel de Unamuno]()
Three Exemplary Novels by Miguel de Unamuno
Rated: 3.70 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsPhilosopher, essayist, dramatist, poet, novelist, Unamuno was an impassioned and unorthodox thinker whose novels foreshadow the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes...Categorized as:
existentialism europe south-europe spain fiction classics philosophy literary-fiction -
![Ignorance by Milan Kundera]()
Ignorance by Milan Kundera
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA man and a woman meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier when they had chosen to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence "their memories no longer match... -
![The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq]()
The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAn international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence.Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties... -
![Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett]()
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsIn Waiting for Godot, two wandering tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait by a lonely tree, to meet up with Mr. Godot, an enigmatic figure in a world where time, place and memory are blurred and meaning is where you find it. The tramps hope that Godot will change their lives for the better. Instead, two eccentric travelers arrive, one man on the end of the other's rope... -
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![The Sublimes by Yuriy Mamleev]()
The Sublimes by Yuriy Mamleev
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe Sublimes, translated by award-winning Marian Schwartz, the novel that revolutionised Russian literature “Yuri Mamleyev’s grim and crazy novel revolutionized Russian literature.” – Le Monde “This book will change your perception of the human nature. This is literature in its boldest, art in its pure sense, – uncompromising and limitless... -
![Star by Yukio Mishima]()
Star by Yukio Mishima
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAll eyes are upon Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer from a roped-off section, screaming and yelling to attract his attention—they would kill for a moment alone with him... -
![Identity by Milan Kundera]()
Identity by Milan Kundera
Rated: 3.69 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThere are situations in which we fail for a moment to recognize the person we are with, in which the identity of the other is erased while we simultaneously doubt our own. This also happens with couples--indeed, above all with couples, because lovers fear more than anything else "losing sight" of that loved one... -
![The Seducer's Diary by Edna Hatlestad Hong, Howard Vincent Hong]()
The Seducer's Diary by Edna Hatlestad Hong, Howard Vincent Hong
Rated: 3.61 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Seducer's Diary records Johannes's discovery of a girl with the Shakespearean name Cordelia, whom he sets out to control. Intricately, meticulously, cunningly, the seduction proceeds. No detail is too small to escape Johannes. "She sits on the sofa by the tea table and I sit on a chair at her side. This position has an intimate quality and at the same time a detaching dignity... -
![Pincher Martin by William Golding]()
Pincher Martin by William Golding
Rated: 3.57 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe sole survivor of a torpedoed destroyer is miraculously cast up on a huge, barren rock in mid-Atlantic. Pitted against him are the sea, the sun, the night cold, and the terror of his isolation. At the core of this raging tale of physical and psychological violence lies Christopher Martin’s will to live as the sum total of his life... -
![Whatever by Michel Houellebecq]()
Whatever by Michel Houellebecq
Rated: 3.54 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsJust thirty, with a well-paid job, depression and no love life, the narrator and anti-hero par excellence of this grim, funny, and clever novel smokes four packs of cigarettes a day and writes weird animal stories in his spare time.Houellebecq's debut novel is painfully realistic portrayal of the vanishing freedom of a world governed by science and by the empty rituals of daily life...
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