Books like 'Salt'
Readers who enjoyed Salt by Earl Lovelace also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The War Prayer by Mark Twain, John Groth
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWritten by Mark Twain during the Philippine-American War in the first decade of the twentieth century, The War Prayer tells of a patriotic church service held to send the town's young men off to war. During the service, a stranger enters and addresses the gathering...Categorized as:
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The Darkest Canyon: Book Two in A Holocaust Story Series by Roberta Kagan
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNazi Germany. Gretchen Schmidt has a secret life. She is in love with a married Jewish man. She is hiding him while his wife is posing as an Aryan woman. Her best friend Hilde, who unbeknownst to Gretchen is a sociopath, is working as a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp... -
The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsTranslation to English of the Spanish short story "El Aleph", originally published in 1945...Categorized as:
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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:
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Recollections of Things to Come by Elena Garro
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis remarkable first novel depicts life in the small Mexican town of Ixtepec during the grim days of the Revolution. The town tells its own story against a variegated background of political change, religious persecution, and social unrest. Miss Garro, who has also won a high reputation as a playwright, is a masterly storyteller...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult book classics female-author -
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:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book classics fiction -
The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet during the height of World War II, a powerful and unsettling tale about a woodcutter and his wife, who finds a mysterious parcel thrown from a passing train.Once upon a time in an enormous forest lived a woodcutter and his wife. The woodcutter is very poor and a war rages around them, making it difficult for them to put food on the table. Yet every night, his wife prays for a child...Categorized as:
historical-fiction magical-realism politics 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
1921: The Great Novel of the Irish Civil War by Morgan Llywelyn
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Irish fight for independence is one of the most captivating tales of the twentieth century. Morgan Llywelyn, the acclaimed historical writer of books like Lion of Ireland, Bard and The Horse Goddess , is the writer born to bring this epic battle to life...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics literary-fiction fiction historical war 20th-century audiobook -
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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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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شرق المتوسط by عبد الرحمن منيف
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsهل يمكن أن ترمم إرادة انسان لم تعد تربطه بالحياة رابطة؟ أنا ذاك الإنسان. لا لست انساناً، السجن في أيامه الولى حاول أن يقتل جسدي. لم أكن أتصور أني أحتمل كل ما فعلوه، لكن احتملت. كانت إرادتي هي وحدها التي تتلقى الضربات، وتردها نظرات غاضبة وصمتاً. وظللت كذلك. لم أرهب، لم أتراجع: الماء البارد، ليكن. التعليق لمدة سبعة أيام، ليكن. التهديد بالقتل والرصاص حولي تناثر، ليكن. كانت ارادتي هي التي تقاوم... -
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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Fathers and Crows by William T. Vollmann
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWith the same panoramic vision and mythic sensibility he brought to The Ice-Shirt, William T. Vollmann continues his hugely original fictional history of the clash of Indians and Europeans in the New World...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction postmodernism 20th-century adult book early-modern fiction -
Bless This House by Norah Lofts
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe fortunes of a beautiful Elizabethan house called Merravay, Built in Suffolk for a queen to sleep in then loved and hated through four centuries. Told in eight episodic narratives by a fascinating pageant of characters including -- a pirate, witch, bawd, rake, recluse, and lovers all of whom play a vital part in the house's history...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult book classics early-modern -
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Almonds and Raisins by Maisie Mosco
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe first in a trilogy about a Jewish family who flee Eastern Europe in the early 20th century and settle in Manchester, England. In the cold world of Manchester in 1905 the family Sandberg found the good things of life scarce and the hardships bitter as the chill northern winds. Sarah, the mother. A born survivor stranded in a land of strangers by the vicious tides of persecution... -
This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratings“In a time when religious liberty is on trial, This Is How It Begins is an extraordinarily pertinent novel dripping in suspense and powerful scenes of political discourse . . . a must read . . .” —Foreword (starred review)A woman bearing a thorny secret. A man fighting for religious freedom. A battle neither saw coming. Massachusetts, 2009. Ludka Zeilonka is relishing her emeritus status... -
Collected Poems, 1937-1971 by John Berryman
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis volume brings together all of Berryman’s poetry, except for his epic The Dream Songs, ranging from his earliest unpublished poem (1934) to those written in the last months of his life (1972). A definitive edition of one of America’s most distinguished poets...Categorized as:
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Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsWith these audacious and murderous witty stories, Donald Barthelme threw the preoccupation of our time into the literary equivalent of a Cuisinart and served up a gorgeous salad of American culture, high and low...Categorized as:
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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 Book of Devices by İhsan Oktay Anar
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"He had sought to be the agent of all forces and actions on the Earth, and thus, just as he had transformed iron ingot into a music box, so had he strived to transform the Earth and all it contained into a machine." Ihsan Oktay Anar's 1996 novella, "The Book of Devices," is a skeleton key to the ever-inventive author's fictional world set in the Ottoman times...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical fantasy -
Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman, Robert Chandler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsEverything Flows is Vasily Grossman’s final testament, written after the Soviet authorities suppressed his masterpiece, Life and Fate. The main story is simple: released after thirty years in the Soviet camps, Ivan Grigoryevich must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world...Categorized as:
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Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis fine, somber novel, by the author of the widely acclaimed The Lost Steps, deals with the French Revolution, chiefly in the Caribbean...Categorized as:
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Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs this complete collection of her short stories demonstrates, Dorothy Parker’s talents extended far beyond brash one-liners and clever rhymes. Her stories not only bring to life the urban milieu that was her bailiwick but lay bare the uncertainties and disappointments of ordinary people living ordinary lives...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:
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La Maravilla by Alfredo Véa
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"Buckeye Road wasn't much of a town, just a place where a pocked and pitted road met an invisible street....It was less that unincorporated, it was unknown..."Yet it is here in the desert outside the Phoenix city limits that Alfredo Vea, Jr., finds a world of marvels spilling out of the adobe homes, tar-paper shacks, rusted Cadillacs, and battered trailers that are otherwise known as "Buckeye... -
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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Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis astonishingly proficient and gripping first novel should be required reading for anyone who calls him or herself a responsible citizen. Not only is it masterfully written, with images as sharp as shards of broken glass, but it also carries a message so potent it burns into the conscience... -
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 Garden of Time by J.G. Ballard
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratings...Categorized as:
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Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne of the last decade's ten most influential books in China, this internationally acclaimed novel by one of the mainland's most important contemporary writers provides an unflinching portrait of life under Chairman Mao.A cart-pusher in a silk mill, Xu Sanguan augments his meager salary with regular visits to the local blood chief...Categorized as:
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Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord by Louis de Bernières
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsIn this iridescent gem of a novel, Louis de Bernieres returns to the territory he mapped so well in The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, a South American country of resplendent eccentricity, gargantuan corruption, and terrifying violence, where the ordinary machinery of government has rusted and the only thing that works is magic... -
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil...Categorized as:
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The President by Miguel Ángel Asturias
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGuatemalan diplomat and writer Miguel Angel Asturias (1899–1974) began this award-winning work while still a law student. It is a story of a ruthless dictator and his schemes to dispose of a political adversary in an unnamed Latin American country usually identified as Guatemala. The book has been acclaimed for portraying both a totalitarian government and its damaging psychological effects... -
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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 -
The Public Burning by Robert Coover
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA controversial best-seller in 1977, The Public Burning has since emerged as one of the most influential novels of our time. The first major work of contemporary fiction ever to use living historical figures as characters, the novel reimagines the three fateful days in 1953 that culminated with the execution of alleged atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg...Categorized as:
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Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn 1956, a black boy named Emmett Till was murdered for wolf-whistling at a white woman. The two white men responsible were tried— and acquitted— in a Mississippi town near Lewis Nordan’s boyhood home. These events changed him forever... -
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsA landmark new translation of a Calvino classic, a whimsical, spirited novel that imagines a life lived entirely on its own terms Cosimo di Rondó, a young Italian nobleman of the eighteenth century, rebels against his parents by climbing into the trees and remaining there for the rest of his life... -
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 fiction historical war female-author -
Burning Cities by Kai Aareleid, Adam Cullen
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOpening up about her family history, Tiina revisits the first two decades of her life following World War II, in Tartu, Estonia. The city, destroyed by Nazi invasion then rebuilt and re-mapped by the Soviets, is home to many secrets, and little Tiina knows them all, even if she does not know their import...Categorized as:
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The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsAround a mysterious death is woven a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived trilogy of novels. Luring the reader down labyrinthine tunnels of myth, history and magic, The Deptford Trilogy provides an exhilarating antidote to a world from where 'the fear and dread and splendour of wonder have been banished'...Categorized as:
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Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith by Gina B. Nahai
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsWhen she is five years old, Lili, the narrator of this epic and magical tale, watches her mother, Roxanna the Angel, throw herself off the balcony of their house on the Avenue of Faith. Roxanna has left no farewell, no explanation. Her family's subsequent search for her reveals no body. no sign of a fall, no trace of an escape...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult book female-author fiction -
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsOn his third birthday Oskar decides to stop growing. Haunted by the deaths of his parents and wielding his tin drum Oskar recounts the events of his extraordinary life; from the long nightmare of the Nazi era to his anarchic adventures in post-war Germany...Categorized as:
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Hallucinations: or, The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando by Reinaldo Arenas
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsIn the brilliant tradition of Don Quixote and Candide, this passionate novel by the author of Before Night Falls is a modern masterpiece of Latin American fiction...Categorized as:
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You Bright and Risen Angels by William T. Vollmann
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsIn the jungles of South America, on the ice fields of Alaska, the plains of the Midwest, and the streets of San Francisco, a fearsome battle rages. The insects are vying for world domination; the inventors of electricity stand in evil opposition. Bug , a young man, rebels against his own kind and joins forces with the insects... -
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA mystery and a love story spanning five decades, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is an epic portrait of passion and ambition, set against the beautiful, brutal landscape of Newfoundland...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure adult book coming-of-age -
Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Olga Matich
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTaking place over a short, turbulent period in 1905, 'Petersburg' is a colourful evocation of Russia's capital—a kaleidoscope of images and impressions, an eastern window on the west, a symbol of the ambiguities and paradoxes of the Russian character... -
World Light by Halldór Laxness
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAs an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland, Olaf Karason has only one consolation: the belief that one day he will be a great poet. The indifference and contempt of most of the people around him only reinforces his sense of destiny, for in Iceland poets are as likely to be scorned as they are to be revered... -
Europe Central by William T. Vollmann
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn this magnificent work of fiction, William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye to the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century... -
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDrawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own prodigious fund of empathy and imagination, Michael Ondaatje’s visionary novel traces the legendary outlaw’s passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and the collective unconscious of his country...Categorized as:
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