Books like 'My Century'
Readers who enjoyed My Century by Günter Grass also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Fortress by Meša Selimović
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA novel on 18th century Sarajevo under Ottoman rule, featuring a soldier returned from the wars. A Muslim, he marries a Christian girl who supports him while he dabbles in politics, eventually leading a raid to rescue a friend from jail... -
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa
Rated: 4.56 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLively reminiscences of bandit warfare in the sertao, the still primitive Brazilian back country, told by a wise, retired outlaw chief. ~Worldcat.orgGrande Sertão: Veredas (Portuguese for "Great Backlands: Tracks"; English translation: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) is a novel published in 1956 by the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa...Categorized as:
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A Man by Oriana Fallaci
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"What's the point anyway — Of suffering, dying? It teaches us to live, boy. A man who does not struggle does not live, he survives." (quote from the book)The book is a pseudo-biography about Alexandros Panagoulis written in the form of a novel. Fallaci had an intense romantic relationship with Panagoulis...Categorized as:
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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDo Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is a villanelle considered to be among the finest works by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas...Categorized as:
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My Voice Because of You, by Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEnglish, Spanish... -
Kinfolk by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsKinfolk is the story of a Chinese family. Dr. Liang moves to America in search of a better life, but his children long to return to China. Each responds to their new life in China differently, providing rich insight into the struggles between Eastern and Western culture, and the differences between generations...Categorized as:
historical-fiction classics politics literary-fiction fiction historical family 20th-century -
The Titan: by Theodore Dreiser
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIf there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it...Categorized as:
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A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLibrarian note: Alternate cover edition of: 9780976395096Set on the eve of World War II, A Mind at Peace captures the anxieties of a Turkish family facing the difficult reality entrenched in the early republic, founded on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923...Categorized as:
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Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsPolitics and the novel, Ghassan Kanafani once said, are an indivisible case. Fadl al-Naqib has reflected that Kanafani wrote the Palestinian story, then he was written by it. His narratives offer entry into the Palestinian experience of the conflict that has anguished the people of the Middle East for more than a century...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics classics university fiction historical 20th-century colonization -
A Division of the Spoils by Paul Scott, Richard Brown
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAgainst the backdrop of the violent partition of India and Pakistan, this volume sketches one last bittersweet romance, revealing the divided loyalties of the British as they flee, retreat from, or cling to India...Categorized as:
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Collected Short Stories: Volume 2 by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis final classic collection reveals Somerset Maugham's unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships in tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice. The stories range from "The Lotus Eater" where a man envisions a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of "The Outstation" and "The Back of Beyond" in Malaya and South East Asia...Categorized as:
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Collected Poems [Of] W. H. Auden by W.H. Auden, Edward Mendelson
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBetween 1927 and his death in 1973, W. H. Auden endowed poetry in the English language with a new face. Or rather, with several faces, since his work ranged from the political to the religious, from the urbane to the pastoral, from the mandarin to the invigoratingly plain-spoken.This collection presents all the poems Auden wished to preserve, in the texts that received his final approval...Categorized as:
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Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis collection of important stories by novelist, journalist, teacher, and Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani includes the stunning novella Men in the Sun (1962), the basis of the The Deceived. Also in the volume are "The Land of Sad Oranges" (1958), "'If You Were a Horse.. -
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2: The Romantic Period through the Twentieth Century by M.H. Abrams, Stephen Greenblatt
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFirmly grounded by the hallmark strengths of all Norton Anthologies--thorough and helpful introductory matter, judicious annotation, complete texts wherever possible--The Norton Anthology of English Literature has been revitalized in this Eighth Edition through the collaboration between six new editors and six seasoned ones...Categorized as:
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Children Of The Arbat by Anatoli Rybakov
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in 1934, Children of the Arbat presents a masterful and chilling psychological portrait of Stalin and details the beginning of his reign of terror and its impact on a generation - represented by a circle of young friends living in Moscow's intellectual and artistic center, the Arbat...Categorized as:
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Missing Soluch by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsPerhaps the most important work in modern Iranian literature, this starkly beautiful novel examines the trials of an impoverished woman and her children living in a remote village in Iran, after the unexplained disappearance of her husband, Soluch.Lyrical yet unsparing, the novel examines her life as she contends with the political corruption, authoritarianism, and poverty of the village...Categorized as:
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The Major Plays by Anton Chekhov, Rosamund Bartlett
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAnton ChekhovThe Major PlaysIvanov * The Sea Gull * Uncle Vanya * The Three Sisters * The Cherry Orchard“Let the things that happen onstage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life,” Chekhov once declared. “For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time, their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up...Categorized as:
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Collected Stories by Frank O'Connor
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe definitive collection of short stories by a master of the form and one of Ireland's most celebrated authorsThis indispensable volume contains the best of Frank O’Connor's short fiction. From “Guests of the Nation” to “The Mad Lomasneys” to “First Confession” to “My Oedipus Complex,” these tales of Ireland have touched generations of readers the world over and placed O'Connor alongside W. B...Categorized as:
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Selected Poems by Boris Pasternak, Борис Пастернак
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAleksandr Blok (1880-1921) lived through his country's savage wars and radical traumas trying to welcome the new order. Trotsky wrote, `Certainly Blok is not one of us, but he came towards us. And that is what broke him.' Pasternak said, `He is as free as the wind... -
The Spirit Level: Poems by Seamus Heaney
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Spirit Level was the first book of poems Heaney published after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Reviewing this book in The New York Times Book Review, Richard Tillinghast noted that Heaney "has been and is here for good . . . [His poems] will last. Anyone who reads poetry has reason to rejoice at living in the age when Seamus Heaney is writing... -
The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield by Katherine Mansfield
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWith an Introduction and Notes by Professor Stephen Arkin, San Francisco State University.Katherine Mansfield is widely regarded as a writer who helped create the modern short story. Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1888, she came to London in 1903 to attend Queen's College and returned permanently in 1908... -
Manto: Selected Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratings...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction politics fiction anthologies drama 20th-century historical -
Uncle Tom's Children by Richard Wright
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSet in the American Deep South, each of the powerful novellas collected here concerns an aspect of the lives of black people in the postslavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. Published in 1938, this was the first book from Wright, who would continue on to worldwide fame as the author of the novels Native Son and Black Boy...Categorized as:
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Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMiljenko Jergovic’s remarkable début collection of stories, Sarajevo Marlboro – winner of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize – earned him wide acclaim throughout Europe. Croatian by birth, Jergovic ? spent his childhood in Sarajevo and chose to remain there throughout most of the war... -
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Selected Poems: Robert Frost by Robert Frost
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe book contains 40 poems covering the entire span of Frost's career and drawn from nine collections. There are detailed notes to aid student comprehension and in addition an Approaches section looks at Frost's life, Imagery and Themes, and the poet's voices...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction university 20th-century adult anthologies fiction historical -
Ports of Call by Amin Maalouf, Alberto Manguel
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA graceful story of love across an insuperable gulf and a powerful allegory for the conflict that has beset the Middle East for the last half century. To call your son Ossyane is like calling him Rebellion. For Ossyane’s father it is a gesture of protest by an excited Ottoman prince, for Ossyane himself it is a burdensome responsibility...Categorized as:
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News from the Empire by Fernando del Paso
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOne of the acknowledged masterpieces of Mexican literature, Fernando del Paso's News from the Empire is a powerful and encyclopedic novel of the tragic lives of Maximilian and his wife, Carlota, the short-lived Emperor and Empress of Mexico...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics fiction historical 20th-century book adult -
The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep by Juliet Butler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsBased on a true story, The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep is a tale of survival and self-determination, innocence and lies.‘We’re waiting. I squeeze my eyes shut and dig my fingers into Masha’s neck where I’m holding her. She digs hers into mine. The curtains slowly open. I can’t see anything because the spotlight is on us, bright as anything and blinding me, but I can hear the gasp go up...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book coming-of-age -
The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsO'Connor's 1956 account of big-city politics, inspired by the career of longtime Boston Mayor James M. Curley, portrays its Irish-American political boss as a demagogue and a rogue who nonetheless deeply understands his constituents. The book was later made into a John Ford film staring Spencer Tracy...Categorized as:
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The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Škvorecký
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto...Categorized as:
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The Manor by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis novel portrays the difficulties encountered by traditionalist Jews coming to terms with the social changes that rocked Poland in the late 19th century. The central figure of the novel is Calman Jacoby, who stands between the old and the new, unable to embrace either whole-heartedly...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction fiction historical 20th-century family book -
Roman Fever (and Other Stories) by Edith Wharton
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA Virago Modern Classic These stories - all powerful moral analyses - demonstrate the true professionalism of Edith Wharton... -
Where the Air Is Clear by Carlos Fuentes
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"Where the Air Is Clear," Carlos Fuentes's first novel, is an unsparing portrayal of Mexico City's upper class. Departing from a traditional linear narrative, Fuentes overlays Mexican myths onto contemporary settings, showing that even the rich and powerful must succumb to the indomitable spirit of Mexico, which undermines all institutions and shapes all destinies...Categorized as:
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The Zone: A Prison Camp Guard's Story by Sergei Dovlatov
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Zone is a satirical novelization of Dovlatov’s time as a prison guard for the Soviet Army in the early 1960s. Snapshots of the prison are juxtaposed with the narrator’s letters to Igor Markovich of Hermitage Press in which he urges Igor to publish the very book we’re reading. As Igor receives portions of the prison camp manuscript, so too does the reader...Categorized as:
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The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFirst published in 1935 and 1939, the two related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which make up The Berlin Stories are recognized today as classics of modern fiction...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics university 20th-century adult anthologies -
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, James L.W. West III
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWritten between 1920 and 1937, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was at the height of his creative powers, these ten lyric tales represent some of the author's finest fiction...Categorized as:
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A Dry White Season by André P. Brink
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, André Brink's classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality.Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid... -
Zayni Barakat by Gamal al-Ghitani, جمال الغيطاني
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"In the course of my long travels I have never seen a city so devastated. After a long time I ventured out into the streets. Death, cold and heavy, hung in the air. Walls have no value here, doors have been eliminated. No one is certain that they will see another day...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsOne of the great masterpieces of Russian literature, the Red Cavalry cycle retains today the shocking freshness that made Babel's reputation when the stories were first published in the 1920s...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics university 20th-century adult anthologies -
The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA major literary event: an explosive, previously unpublished novel from the 1940s by the legendary author of Native Son and Black Boy. Fred Daniels, a black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago neighborhood and taken to the local precinct where he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit...Categorized as:
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Sofia Petrovna by Aline Werth, Lydia Chukovskaya
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSofia Petrovna is Lydia Chukovskaya's fictional account of the Great Purge. Sofia is a Soviet Everywoman, a doctor's widow who works as a typist in a Leningrad publishing house. When her beloved son is caught up in the maelstrom of the purge, she joins the long lines of women outside the prosecutor's office, hoping against hope for any good news... -
The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories by Ivan Bunin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe first story in this book "The Gentleman from San Francisco" is translated by D. H. Lawrence and S. S. Koteliansky. Owing to a mistake Mr. Lawrence's name has been omitted from the title-page. The three other stories are translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
Shadows on the Hudson by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSerialized in the late 1950s, "Shadows on the Hudson" was translated from Yiddish and published posthumously as a complete novel in 1998, receiving widespread literary acclaim.From the Upper West Side to Miami's pastel resorts, Shadows on the Hudson traces the intertwined destiny of survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust...Categorized as:
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The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. F: The Twentieth Century & After by Stephen Greenblatt, Jahan Ramazani
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFirmly grounded by the hallmark strengths of all Norton Anthologies thorough and helpful introductory matter, judicious annotation, complete texts wherever possible The Norton Anthology of English Literature has been revitalized in this Eighth Edition through the collaboration between six new editors and six seasoned ones...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction university 20th-century adult anthologies fiction historical -
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One by One in the Darkness by Deirdre Madden
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA story about three Northern Irish sisters. It has a double narrative, part of which describes their childhood and shows the impact of the political changes and the violence of the late-1960s upon the people of Ulster. The author won the Somerset Maugham Prize for "The Birds of the Innocent Wood"...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics university classics fiction historical war -
I Burn Paris by Bruno Jasieński
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"This is a superb text of astonishing modernity, a veritable manifesto of the wretched of the earth ..."— MarianneBruno Jasienski’s I Burn Paris has remained one of Poland’s most uncomfortable masterstrokes of literature since its initial and controversial serialization in 1928 in the French magazine L’Humanité (for which Jasienski was deported)...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book dystopia -
The Old Forest and Other Stories by Peter Taylor
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFrom the grand master of the American short story, these fourteen tales of domestic life in the South during the thirties and forties explore that extraordinary world of manners, expectations and unspoken understanding. The reader is drawn as if by magnetic force into a world rendered in breathtaking, painterly detail...Categorized as:
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Spain, Take This Chalice from Me and Other Poems: Parallel Text Edition (Penguin Classics) by César Vallejo
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA major new bilingual edition of the Peruvian poet's workCesar Vallejo is one of the best-known Latin American poets of the twentieth century. Challenging, intense, and difficult to translate, Vallejo's work has often been overshadowed by his fervent endorsement of communism...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction politics 20th-century anthropomorphism fiction anthologies historical -
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...Categorized as:
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The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn 1831 Nat Turner awaits death in a Virginia jail cell. He is a slave, a preacher, and the leader of the only effective slave revolt in the history of 'that peculiar institution'. William Styron's ambitious and stunningly accomplished novel is Turner's confession, made to his jailers under the duress of his God...Categorized as:
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