Books like 'On Being Blue'
Readers who enjoyed On Being Blue by William H. Gass also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
20th century psychological classics philosophical
-
Death and the Dervish by Meša Selimović
Rated: 4.55 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsDeath and the Dervish is an acclaimed novel by Bosnian writer Mesa Selimovic. It recounts the story of Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish residing in an Islamic monastery in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century during the Ottoman Turk hegemony over the Balkans. When his brother is arrested, he must descend into the Kafkaesque world of the Ottoman authorities in his search to discover what happened to him... -
![The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa]()
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 philosophical 20th-century adult audiobook book contemporary existentialism -
![Short Stories From Rabindranath Tagore by Rabindranath Tagore]()
Short Stories From Rabindranath Tagore by Rabindranath Tagore
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe sixteen short stories collected here were written between 1891 and 1917 by the Bengali poet, writer, painter, musician and mystic, Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). Throughout these stories, Tagore's main interest is people and the kaleidoscope of human emotions, as men and women struggle with the restrictions and prohibitions of contemporary Hindu society... -
![The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 by Samuel Beckett]()
The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 by Samuel Beckett
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsNobel prize winner Samuel Beckett is one of the most profoundly original writers of our century. He gives expression to the anguish and isolation of the individual consciousness with a purity and minimalism that have altered the shape of world literature... -
-
![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 . . -
![Collected Stories and Other Writings by John Cheever]()
Collected Stories and Other Writings by John Cheever
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsJohn Cheever’s stories rank among the finest achievements of twentieth-century short fiction. Ensnared by the trappings of affluence, adrift in the emptiness of American prosperity, his characters find themselves in the midst of dramas that, however comic, pose profound questions about conformity and class, pleasure and propriety, and the conduct and meaning of an individual life... -
![Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell]()
Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe dazzling second volume of The Alexandria Quartet--an enthralling and deeply disturbing work of gorgeous surfaces and endless deceptions.In Alexandra, in the years before the Second World War, an exiled Irish schoolteacher seeks to unravel his sexual obsession with two women: the tubercular cafe dancer, Melissa, and Justine, the alluring Jewish wife of a wealthy Coptic Christian... -
![The Drinker by Hans Fallada]()
The Drinker by Hans Fallada
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis astonishing, autobiographical tour de force was written by Hans Fallada in an encrypted notebook while he was incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum. Discovered after his death, it tells the tale—often fierce, often poignant, often extremely funny—of a small businessman losing control as he fights valiantly to blot out an increasingly oppressive society...Categorized as:
classics philosophical 20th-century adult book fiction historical historical-fiction -
![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:
classics philosophical 20th-century anthologies europe existentialism fiction historical -
![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... -
![Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard]()
Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIt is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness... -
![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... -
![المجنون by Kahlil Gibran]()
المجنون by Kahlil Gibran
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsالترجمة الوحيدة التي أقرها جبرانThis thought-provoking collection of strange, subtle, but meaningful parables casts an ironic light on the beliefs, hopes, and vanities of humankind... -
![The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov]()
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a perversely magical literary detective story - subtle, intricate, leading to a tantalizing climax - about the mysterious life of a famous writer... -
-
![The Second Coming by Walker Percy]()
The Second Coming by Walker Percy
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWill Barrett (also the hero of Percy's The Last Gentleman) is a lonely widower suffering from a depression so severe that he decides he doesn't want to continue living. But then he meets Allison, a mental hospital escapee making a new life for herself in a greenhouse... -
![Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard]()
Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard was one of the most widely translated and admired writers of his generation, winner of the three most coveted literary prizes in Germany. Gargoyles, one of his earliest novels, is a singular, surreal study of the nature of humanity. One morning a doctor and his son set out on daily rounds through the grim mountainous Austrian countryside... -
![Second Skin by John Hawkes, Jeffrey Eugenides]()
Second Skin by John Hawkes, Jeffrey Eugenides
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratings"John Hawkes is an extraordinary writer. I have always admired his books. They should be more widely read...Categorized as:
classics philosophical fiction literary-fiction contemporary 20th-century postmodernism nautical -
![La coscienza di Zeno. Senilità. Una vita by Italo Svevo]()
-
![The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch]()
The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA sly, witty, and beautifully orchestrated tale about the difficulty of being good Edward Baltram is overwhelmed with guilt. His nasty little prank has gone horribly wrong: he has fed his closest friend a sandwich laced with a hallucinogenic drug and the young man has fallen out of a window to his death. Consumed with guilt, Edward experiences a debilitating crisis of conscience... -
![The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker]()
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAlthough most of the action of The Mezzanine occurs on the escalator of an office building, where its narrator is returning to work after buying shoelaces, this startlingly inventive and witty novel takes us farther than most fiction written today. It lends to milk cartons the associative richness of Marcel Proust's madeleines... -
![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... -
![Agapē Agape by William Gaddis, Joseph Tabbi]()
Agapē Agape by William Gaddis, Joseph Tabbi
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWilliam Gaddis published four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told by way of a social history of the player piano in America...Categorized as:
classics philosophical fiction 20th-century 21st-century postmodernism literary-fiction technology -
![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:
classics philosophical 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary existentialism -
![The End of the Road by John Barth]()
The End of the Road by John Barth
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIts first-person protagonist, Jacob Horner, suffers from nihilistic paralysis: an inability to choose a course of action. As part of a schedule of unorthodox therapies, Horner's nameless Doctor has him take a teaching job at a local teachers college... -
-
![Abel Sánchez by Miguel de Unamuno]()
Abel Sánchez by Miguel de Unamuno
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe stories "Abel Sánchez, " "The Madness of Doctor Montarco, " and "Saint Emmanuel the Good Marty" are three of the Spanish philosopher Unamuno's most haunting parables. Quixotic madmen are the protagonists of these imaginative stories, which probe the horror of a nothingness beyond death. The Introduction by Anthony Kerrigan, the translator, traces Unamuno's life...Categorized as:
classics philosophical fiction 20th-century philosophy romantic-love audiobook literary-fiction -
![Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera]()
Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsMilan Kundera is a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprise. In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she is a stranger he picked up on the road--only to become strangers to each other in reality as their game proceeds. In another a teacher fakes piety in order to seduce a devout girl, then jilts her and yearns for God... -
![Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig]()
Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsIn this best-selling new book, his first in seventeen years, Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, takes us on a poignant and passionate journey as mysterious and compelling as his first life-changing work. Instead of a motorcycle, a sailboat carries his philosopher-narrator Phaedrus down the Hudson River as winter closes in... -
![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:
classics philosophical europe south-europe spain fiction philosophy literary-fiction -
![Steps by Jerzy Kosiński]()
Steps by Jerzy Kosiński
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWinner of the National Book Award for FictionFrom the esteemed author of the classics The Painted Bird and Being There comes this award-winning novel about one man's sexual and sensual experiences, the fabric from which his life has been woven.Jerzy Kosinski's classic vision of moral and sexual estrangement brilliantly captures the disturbing undercurrents of modern politics and culture... -
![Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz]()
Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsIn this bitterly funny novel by the renowned Polish author Witold Gombrowicz. a writer finds himself tossed into a chaotic world of schoolboys by a diabolical professor who wishes to reduce him to childishness. Originally published in Poland in 1937. Ferdydurke became an instant literary sensation and catapulted the young author to fame. Deemed scandalous and subversive by Nazis. Stalinists... -
![The Image by Jean de Berg, Catherine Robbe-Grillet]()
The Image by Jean de Berg, Catherine Robbe-Grillet
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOriginally published in France in 1958 and immediately banned, this novel concerns the sexual games of domination and punishment that take place between two women to which only the narrator has access... -
![Genetrix by François Mauriac]()
Genetrix by François Mauriac
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMathilde Cazenave morte, sa belle-mère jubile : elle va pouvoir reconquérir totalement son fils bien-aimé. Félicité a tort de se réjouir trop vite, car, sur le visage apaisé de la jeune morte, Fernand entrevoit ce qu'aurait pu être le bonheur avec Mathilde... -
![How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers]()
How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"Another""What It Means When a Crowd in a Faraway Nation Takes a Soldier Representing Your Own Nation, Shoots Him, Drags Him from His Vehicle and Then Mutilates Him in the Dust""The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water""On Wanting to Have Three Walls Up Before She Gets Home""Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance""She Waits, Seething, Blooming""Quiet""Your Mother and I""Naveed""Notes for a...Categorized as:
classics philosophical 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
![Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov]()
Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero - sullen, gawky Hugh Person - to Switzerland... As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride.. -
-
![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 Comforters by Muriel Spark]()
The Comforters by Muriel Spark
Rated: 3.57 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCaroline Rose is plagued by the tapping of typewriter keys and the strange, detached narration of her every thought and action. Caroline has an unusual problem - she realises she is in a novel...Categorized as:
classics philosophical fiction 20th-century literary-fiction mystery female-author humor -
![The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead]()
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
Rated: 3.56 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsEvery family lives in an evolving story, told by all its members, inside a landscape of portentous events and characters. Their view of themselves is not shared by people looking from outside in--visitors, and particularly relatives--for they have to see something pretty humdrum, even if, as in this case, the fecklessness they complain of is extreme...Categorized as:
classics philosophical 20th-century audiobook book contemporary family female-author -
![Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac]()
Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac
Rated: 3.56 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis is a celebration of the life of Neal Cassady, the author's friend and inspiration. The son of a Denver drop-out, brought up homeless and motherless during the Depression, Cassady - novelized as Cody - lived his life raw, hustling in pool halls, stealing cars and living wild... -
![Investigations of a Dog by Franz Kafka]()
Investigations of a Dog by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"Investigations of a Dog" (German: "Forschungen eines Hundes") is a short story by Franz Kafka written in 1922. It was published posthumously in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer (Berlin, 1931). The first English translation by Willa and Edwin Muir was published by Martin Secker in London in 1933. It appeared in The Great Wall of China. Stories and Reflections (New York: Schocken Books, 1946)...Categorized as:
classics philosophical 20th-century adult animals anthologies audiobook existentialism
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.
