Books like 'The Image'
Readers who enjoyed The Image by Jean de Berg & Catherine Robbe-Grillet also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
20th century psychological steamy classics lgbtq
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Time Regained by Marcel Proust, D.J. Enright
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTime Regained, the final volume of In Search of Lost Time, begins in the bleak and uncertain years of World War I. Years later, after the war’s end, Proust’s narrator returns to Paris and reflects on time, reality, jealousy, artistic creation, and the raw material of literature—his past life... -
Collected Stories by Carson McCullers
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe novelist, dramatist, and poet Carson McCullers was at the peak of her powers as a writer of short fiction.In nineteen stories that explore her signature themes of wounded adolescence, loneliness in marriage, and the tragicomedy of life in the South, McCullers's novellas "The Member of the Wedding" and "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" are also included...Categorized as:
classics lgbtq 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies disability female-author -
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 Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA landmark collection that brings together Truman Capote’s life’s work in the form he called his “great love,” The Complete Stories confirms Capote’s status as a master of the short story... -
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Ciuleandra by Liviu Rebreanu
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWritten in the interwar period and published in 1927, this psychological thriller has captured the imagination of Romanian readers ever since. The book begins with a murder, as Puiu, a young aristocrat, strangles his wife on the night of the royal ball. To avoid a public trial and prison sentence, his father arranges to have him committed to a mental asylum... -
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... -
A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past... -
The Obscene Madame D by Hilda Hilst
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe English-language debut of one of Brazil’s leading writers of the twentieth centuryThe Obscene Madame D is the first work by acclaimed Brazilian author Hilda Hilst to be published in English. Radically irreverent and formally impious, this novel portrays an unyielding radical intelligence, a sixty-year-old woman who decides to live in the recess under the stairs... -
Death in Midsummer and Other Stories by Yukio Mishima
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRecognized throughout the world for his brilliance as a novelist and playwright, Yukio Mishima is also noted as a master of the short story in his native Japan. Here nine of his finest stories, selected by Mishima himself, represent his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance... -
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... -
The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFollowing A Boy's Own Story (now a classic of American fiction) and his richly acclaimed The Beautiful Room Is Empty, here is the eagerly awaited final volume of Edmund White's groundbreaking autobiographical trilogy... -
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Confusion by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRoland, a young student at a new university, meets an inspirational teacher who sweeps him into his world of literature and learning. When the boy moves into the same building as the teacher and his wife, he becomes ever closer to this remarkable man, though he also senses his mentor pulling away from him – sometimes even seeming to hate him... -
Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWake In Fright was first published in 1961 and the film version, The Outback, starring Donald Pleasance was released in 1971. Both the book and the film have achieved a cult status as the Australian answer to US and UK novels and films of 1960s youthful alienation... -
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A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch, Peter Reed
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn a dark comedy of errors, Iris Murdoch portrays the mischief wrought by Julius, a cynical intellectual who decides to demonstrate through a Machiavellian experiment how easily loving couples, caring friends, and devoted siblings can betray their loyalties... -
Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsConfessions of a Mask tells the story of Kochan, an adolescent boy tormented by his burgeoning attraction to men: he wants to be “normal.” Kochan is meek-bodied and unable to participate in the more athletic activities of his classmates. He begins to notice his growing attraction to some of the boys in his class, particularly the pubescent body of his friend Omi... -
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The Vanishing Princess: Stories by Jenny Diski
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe only story collection from the beloved Jenny Diski—darkly funny, subversive, sexy, and eccentric tales from one of the most original and intelligent voices of our timeJenny Diski’s prose is as sharp and steely as her imagination is wild and wondrous... -
House of Incest by Anaïs Nin, Val Telberg
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsWith an introduction by Allison Pease, this new edition of House of Incest is a lyrical journey into the subconscious mind of one of the most celebrated feminist writers of the twentieth-century.Originally published in 1936, House of Incest is Anaïs Nin’s first work of fiction... -
Mygale by Thierry Jonquet
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsRichard Lafargue is an eminent plastic surgeon haunted by dirty secrets. He has an operating theatre in the basement of his chateau and keeps his partner Eve imprisoned in her bedroom, a room he has equipped with an intercom and 300-watt speakers through which he bellows orders... -
Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsGombrowicz's strange, bracing final novel probes the divide between young and old while providing a grotesque evocation of obsession. While recuperating from wartime Warsaw in the Polish countryside, the unnamed narrator and his friend, Fryderyk, attempt to force amour between two local youths, Karol and Henia, as a kind of a lewd entertainment... -
The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFor more than three decades, Lucien — one of the most notorious characters in the history of the novel — has haunted the imaginations of readers around the world. Remarkably, the astounding protagonist of Gabrielle Wittkop’s lyrical 1972 novella, The Necrophiliac, has never appeared in English until now... -
The Story of the Night by Colm Tóibín, Russell Bentley
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRichard Garay lives alone with his mother, hiding his sexuality from her and from those around him. Stifled by a job he despises, he finds himself willing to take considerable risks.Set in Argentina in a time of great change, The Story of the Night is a powerful and moving novel about a man who, as the Falklands War is fought and lost, finds his own way to emerge into the world... -
Bilgewater by Jane Gardam
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOriginally published in 1977, Jane Gardam's Bilgewater is an affectionate and complex rendering-in-miniature of the discomforts of growing up and first love seen through the eyes of inimitable Marigold Green, an awkward, eccentric, highly intelligent girl. The Evening Standard described Bilgewater as "one of the funniest, most entertaining, most unusual stories about young love...Categorized as:
classics steamy 20th-century bildungsroman boarding-school book children coming-of-age -
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Henry and Cato by Iris Murdoch, Jonathan Cowley
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen old friends Henry and Cato reunite after years apart, they quickly become embroiled in the drama of each other’s lives. Henry, who has just returned to England as the sole heir to his recently deceased brother’s estate, quickly begins to uncover secrets buried long ago... -
The Counterfeiters by André Gide
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsOriginally published in 1925, this book became known for the frank sexuality of its contents and its account of middle class French morality. The themes of the book explore the problem of morals, the problem of society and the problems facing writers. An appendix to this edition (Vintage, 1973) contains excerpts from the Gide's notebooks which he kept while writing this book... -
Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsWinner of the National Book Award for FictionSabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. At sixty-four Sabbath is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous; sex is an obsession and a principle, an instrument of perpetual misrule in his daily existence... -
Margery Kempe by Robert Glück
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis tale of romantic obsession chronicles two relationships that take place in disparate worlds, separated by 500 years. The story of failed saint Margery Kempe's physical passion for Jesus mirrors the tale of the narrator's adoration of a young man...Categorized as:
lgbtq classics fiction historical-fiction 20th-century literary-fiction historical medieval -
Nocturnes for the King of Naples by Edmund White, Garth Greenwell
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe letters of a seducer to the great love of his life, a sensual tour-de-force by “the paterfamilias of queer literature” ( New York Times )“Can’t sleep tonight. Was lying in bed reading the biography of a great man whose genius deserted him . . . The genius who deserted me was you...Categorized as:
lgbtq classics steamy fiction 20th-century contemporary psychological literary-fiction -
Madame de Sade by Yukio Mishima
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn this fascinating all-female drama, Yukio Mishima endeavors to explain the riddle of why the Marquis de Sade's wife, who had remained loyal to her husband throughout the years of his wild debaucheries and during his lengthy imprisonment, decided to sever their relationship once he had regained his freedom... -
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... -
Small Lives by Pierre Michon
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsExplores the act of writing through the intimate portraits of eight interconnected individuals in the author's native village of Creuse. In this evocative poetic narrative the quest to breathe life into the stories of these individuals becomes an exploration of the author's own voice... -
Thirst for Love by Yukio Mishima, Alfred H. Marks
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn Thirst for Love , Japan's greatest modern writer created a portrait of sexual torment and corrosive jealousy that is as delicately nuanced as Madame Bovary and as remorseless as Justine . Yukio Mishima's protagonist is Etsuko, whose philandering husband has died horribly from typhoid... -
Ladders to Fire by Anaïs Nin, Gunther Stuhlman
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAnaïs Nin's Ladders to Fire interweaves the stories of several women, each emotionally inhibited in her own way: through self-doubt, fear, guilt, moral drift, and distrust. The novel follows their inner struggles to overcome these barriers to happiness and wholeness. The author's own experiences, as recorded in her famous diaries, supplied the raw material for her fiction... -
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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... -
Slow Homecoming by Peter Handke
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsProvocative, romantic, and restlessly exploratory, Peter Handke is one of the great writers of our time. Slow Homecoming, originally published in the late 1970s, is central to his achievement and to the powerful influence he has exercised on other writers, chief among them W.G. Sebald...Categorized as:
classics 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary literary-fiction -
Sfinksi by Anne Garréta
Rated: 3.71 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSphinx is the remarkable debut novel, originally published in 1986, by the incredibly talented and inventive French author Anne Garréta, one of the few female members of Oulipo, the influential and exclusive French experimental literary group whose mission is to create literature based on mathematical and linguistic restraints, and whose ranks include Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, among others... -
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... -
The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff
Rated: 3.77 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsNow a major motion picture starring Eddie Redmayne and directed by Tom Hooper, THE DANISH GIRL is a shockingly original novel about one of the most unusual and passionate love stories of the 20th century... -
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter
Rated: 3.77 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsDesiderio, an employee of the city under a bizarre reality attack from Doctor Hoffman's mysterious machines, has fallen in love with Albertina, the Doctor's daughter. But Albertina, a beautiful woman made of glass, seems only to appear to him in his dreams... -
Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA title in the Bristol Classical Press German Texts series, in German with English notes, vocabulary and introduction. Thomas Mann (1875-1955), was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, and "Tonio Kroger" occupies a central position in his spiritual and artistic development... -
Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler
Rated: 3.77 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThis wonderful translation of Dream Story will allow a fresh generation of readers to enjoy this beautiful, heartless and baffling novella. Dream Story tells how through a simple sexual admission a husband and wife are driven apart into rival worlds of erotic intrigue and revenge... -
Closer by Dennis Cooper
Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsLike Jean Genet and William Burroughs, Dennis Cooper assaults the senses as he engages the mind with visions of nightmare intensity in a world where stimulation without excitement and experience without emotion are prized... -
Two Girls, Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill
Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsJustine, a beautiful, lonely, sexually addicted young woman, meets Dorothy, fat, maladjusted, and unhappy since childhood. They are superficially a study in contrasts yet share equally haunting sexual burdens carried since youth. With common secrets, they are drawn into a remarkable friendship... -
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The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLike his contemporary and rival Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil boldly explored the dark, irrational undercurrents of humanity. The Confusions of Young Törless, published in 1906 while he was a student, uncovers the bullying, snobbery, and vicious homoerotic violence at an elite boys academy... -
Belle de jour by Joseph Kessel, Geoffrey Wagner
Rated: 3.58 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe startling and groundbreaking novel that inspired Luis Buñuel's film by the same name is finally available once more. In a world that blurs the lines between feminism and female sexuality, Belle de Jour remains as vital and controversial today as it was in its 1960 debut. Severine Serizy is a wealthy and beautiful Parisian housewife... -
Frisk by Dennis Cooper
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsCooper says, "I present the actual act of evil so it's visible and give it a bunch of facets so that you can actually look at it and experience it. You're seduced into dealing with it. ... So with Frisk, whatever pleasure you got out of making a picture in your mind based on ... those people being murdered, you take responsibility for it... -
The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself "a rake among scholars, a scholar among rakes". Little does he realize how prophetic this motto will be--or how damning. For as we follow Kepesh into the wilderness of erotic possibility, we discover an intelligent and often hilarious novel about the dilemma of pleasure.Librarian's note: please see this edition for an alternate cover... -
The Ambassadors by Henry James
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsGraham Greene and E.M. Forster marvelled at it, but F.R. Leavis considered it to be 'not only not one of his great books, but to be a bad one.' As for the author, he held The Ambassadors as the favorite among all his novels.Sent from Massachusetts by the formidable Mrs... -
House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories by Yasunari Kawabata
Rated: 3.61 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThree surreal, erotically charged stories from Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata.In the three long tales in this collection, Yasunari Kawabata examines the boundaries between fantasy and reality in the minds of three lonely men...
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