Books like 'The First Man'
Readers who enjoyed The First Man by Albert Camus also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Forest of the Gods by Balys Sruoga
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBalys Sruoga was a well-known Lithuanian poet, dramatist, and literary critic. In 1943, professor of Vilnius University, he was deported to Stutthof concentration camp (along with other professors, under the charge of campaigning students against joining the Reich troops)...Categorized as:
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Gone with the Wind Volume 1 by Margaret Mitchell
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGone With The Wind Volume 1: Special Edition By Margaret Mitchell Tomorrow is another day ... Set against the dramatic backdrop of the American Civil War, Margaret Mitchell's magnificent historical epic is an unforgettable tale of love and loss, of a nation mortally divided and a people forever changed...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book drama -
Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAn aspiring photographer follows her dreams and faces her fears in a poignant novel about finding beauty, promise, and love amid the chaos of war-torn Kurdistan.It’s 1979. Olivia Murray, a secretary at a Los Angeles newspaper, is determined to become a photojournalist and make a difference with her work... -
Το νούμερο 31328 by Ilias Venezis, Ηλίας Βενέζης
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsTο Nούμερο 31328 είναι η ίδια η ταυτότητα του συγγραφέα, τότε που παιδί δεκαοκτώ χρόνων οδηγήθηκε από τους Tούρκους στα κάτεργα της Aνατολής. Tο βιβλίο είναι ένα συγκλονιστικό χρονικό «γραμμένο με αίμα», όπως επεσήμανε ο Bενέζης, προσθέτοντας: «Λέω για την καυτή ύλη, για τη σάρκα που στάζει το αίμα της και πλημμυρίζει τις σελίδες του»...Categorized as:
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The Girls in Blue by Fenella J. Miller
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJane Hadley has nothing to lose when she runs away to join the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Whatever faces her in war-torn London can't be any worse than staying at home with her abusive father...The city is nothing like she could have imagined, but she's soon on the move, travelling from base to base for her top-secret training...Categorized as:
historical-fiction coming-of-age literary-fiction romance historical fiction ww2 war -
Life in the Tomb by Stratis Myrivilis, Στρατής Μυριβήλης
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 12 ratings"Life in the Tomb" a war novel written in journal form by a sergeant in the trenches, has been the single most successful and widely read serious work of fiction in Greece since its publication in serial form in 1923-1924, having sold more than 80,000 copies in book form despite its inclusion on the list of censored novels under both the Metaxas regime and the German occupation... -
The Last Restaurant in Paris by Lily Graham
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsParis 1944. To save her people, she served the enemy.In enemy-occupied Paris, as the locals go to bed starving and defeated by the war, music and laughter spills through the door of a little restaurant, crowded with German soldiers. The owner Marianne moves on weary feet between its packed tables, carrying plates of steaming, wholesome food for the enemy officers...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure book female-mc fiction -
Surviving the Fatherland by Annette Oppenlander
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSpanning thirteen years from 1940 to 1953 and set against the epic panorama of WWII, SURVIVING THE FATHERLAND is a sweeping saga of family, love, and betrayal that illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the children's war...Categorized as:
coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook book family fiction -
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Richard Harris
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis collection brings together music played by Captain Corelli himself and original pieces evoking the sounds and events of the book and of 3 earlier novels, the Latin Trilogy', by Louis de Bernieres...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
Heavy Sand by Anatoli Rybakov
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTwo main parts of Anatoly Rybakov are titled after the writer’s major novels, Children of the Arbat and Heavy Sand, and explore the continuing relevance of these works for contemporary Russia...Categorized as:
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The Maid's Secret by Shari J. Ryan
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsCzechoslovakia, 1942: “Please don’t take him,” I plead to the Nazis.“I love you, Mila,” Ben says, hoarsely. “So much. Forever.”“Ben!” I shout as the soldiers pull him away, my heart thudding. “I love you. Please, come back.” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs as the world turns black around me.In the mountains of Bohemia, Mila, a Romani, works as a maid for an aristocratic Jewish family...Categorized as:
historical-fiction coming-of-age literary-fiction europe western-central-europe war historical ww2 -
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis stirring, poignant novel, based on real historical events that made of actual people true heroes, unfolds the tragedy that befell the Armenian people in the dark year of 1915. The Great War is raging through Europe, and in the ancient, mountainous lands southwest of the Caspian Sea the Turks have begun systematically to exterminate their Christian subjects...Categorized as:
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Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsCancer Ward - a largely autobiographical account of a group of people who pass through the cancer wing of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death - was hailed by Time as 'a literary event of the first magnitude' when it first appeared in 1966...Categorized as:
classics existentialism historical-fiction literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult book -
The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D. Yalom
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWhen sixteen-year-old Alfred Rosenberg is called into his headmaster’s office for anti-Semitic remarks he made during a school speech, he is forced, as punishment, to memorize passages about Spinoza from the autobiography of the German poet Goethe. Rosenberg is stunned to discover that Goethe, his idol, was a great admirer of the Jewish seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza... -
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The Wall by John Hersey
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRiveting & compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of forty men & women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Hersey's novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution & as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation & cruelty--a gripping, visceral story, impossible to put down...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction -
I Saw Her That Night by Drago Jančar
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsI Saw Her That Night, a love story in time of war, is a novel about a few years in the life and mysterious disappearance of Veronika Zarnik, a young bourgeois woman from Ljubljana, sucked into the whirlwind of a turbulent period in history... -
The Kites by Romain Gary
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn a small farm in Normandy, as Hitler rises to power in Germany, young Ludo comes of age in the care of his Uncle Ambrose, an eccentric mailman, kite-maker, and pacifist. Ludo’s quiet existence changes the day he meets Lila, a girl from the aristocratic Polish family who own the estate next door. In a single glance, Ludo instantly falls in love forever; Lila, on the other hand, remains elusive...Categorized as:
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Aime Cesaire, The Collected Poetry by Aimé Césaire
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThis edition, containing an extensive introduction, notes, the French original, and a new translation of Césaire's poetry―the complex and challenging later works as well as the famous Notebook―will remain the definitive Césaire in English...Categorized as:
colonization literary-fiction fiction 20th-century historical violent-conflict book adult -
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsNevil Shute's most beloved novel, a tale of love and war, follows its enterprising heroine from the Malayan jungle during World War II to the rugged Australian outback.Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman living in Malaya, is captured by the invading Japanese and forced on a brutal seven-month death march with dozens of other women and children...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.. -
They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy, Patrick Leigh Fermor
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPainting an unrivalled portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, this story is told through the eyes of two young Transylvanian cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy...Categorized as:
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A Bitter Rain by James D. Shipman
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA former professor descends into darkness in this provocative story of a Nazi soldier torn between duty and conscience. East Prussia, Nazi Germany, 1939. History professor Erik Mueller is a model citizen and a family man. He’s also a decorated sergeant in the Gestapo... -
Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andrić, Joseph Hitrec
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in the town of Travnik, Bosnian Chronicle presents the struggle for supremacy in a region that stubbornly refuses to submit to any outsider. The era is Napoleanic and the novel, both in its historical scope and psychological subtley, Tolstoyan. In its portray of conflict and fierce ethnic loyalties, the story is also eerily relevant...Categorized as:
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The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel by Isaac Babel
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFollowing the historic publication of Norton's The Complete Works of Isaac Babel in the fall of 2001, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel appears as the most authoritative and complete edition of his fiction ever published in paperback...Categorized as:
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The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn her most famous novel, Simone de Beauvoir does not flinch in her look at Parisian intellectual society at the end of the Second World War. Drawing on those who surrounded her -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Arthur Koestler -- and her passionate love affair with Nelson Algren, Beauvoir dissects the emotional and philosophical currents of her time...Categorized as:
classics existentialism historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book drama -
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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What the Day Owes the Night by Yasmina Khadra
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratings'If a woman loves you, Younes, if she truly loves you, and if you have the wisdom to appreciate this great privilege, then there is no god to touch you.'As a young man Younes' life is irrevocably changed when he leaves his broken home for the vibrant, colourful and affluent European district of Río Salado... -
Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe wonderful sequel to The Light Years returns readers to Britain in September, 1939, as war breaks out. Sheltered Louise, now 16, goes from cooking school to London parties. For 14-year-old Polly, the terrors of war cannot forestall the pangs of adolescence. And though Clary's father has been reported missing since Dunkirk, she holds to the belief that he's alive...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, Lynda S. Robinson
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis epic tale encompasses the whole of the then-known world, from Babylon to Crete, from Thebes to Jerusalem, while centering around one unforgettable figure: Sinuhe, a man of mysterious origins who rises from the depths of degradation to become personal physician to Pharaoh Akhnaton... -
The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot, Caroldean K. Cummings
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 35 ratings"The Waste Land, Prufrock, and Other Poems" is a collection of T. S. Eliot's early poetry. This collection brings together "The Waste Land," arguably T. S. Eliot's most famous poem, with the poetry originally published in "Prufrock and Other Observations" and "Poems (1920)...Categorized as:
classics existentialism literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult book fiction -
The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAnthony Powell’s universally acclaimed epic A Dance to the Music of Time offers a matchless panorama of twentieth-century London. Now, for the first time in decades, readers in the United States can read the books of Dance as they were originally published—as twelve individual novels—but with a twenty-first-century twist: they’re available only as e-books...Categorized as:
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The Autumn of the Ace by Louis de Bernières
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsLouis de Bernières is the master of historical fiction which makes you both laugh and cry. This book follows an unforgettable family after the Second World War.Daniel Pitt was an RAF fighter in the First World War and an espionage agent for the SOE in the Second. Now the conflicts he faces are closer to home...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction colonization coming-of-age fiction historical war audiobook -
Fear by Gabriel Chevallier
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratings1915: Jean Dartemont heads off to the Great War, an eager conscript. The only thing he fears is missing the action. Soon, however, the vaunted “war to end all wars” seems like a war that will never end: whether mired in the trenches or going over the top, Jean finds himself caught in the midst of an unimaginable, unceasing slaughter...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
World's End by Upton Sinclair
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWorld's End is the first novel in Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd series. First published in 1940, the story covers the period from 1913 to 1919. This is the beginning of a monumental 7,340 page novel, the story of Lanny Budd, a young American, beginning in Europe in 1913. It is also an intimate record of a great world which fell victim to its own civilization. A new world was about to be born...Categorized as:
historical-fiction classics literary-fiction coming-of-age fiction historical 20th-century ww1 -
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Midnight Clear by William Wharton
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsChristmas Eve 1944, and six young US soldiers are sent close to the German lines to establish an observation post in an abandoned chateau in the Ardennes Forest. Hearing strange noises, they gradually realise that they are surrounded. But perhaps the Germans are as reluctant to fight as themselves...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction friendship -
Looking At The Moon by Kit Pearson
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsNorah, an English "war guest"living withthe wealthy Ogilvie family in Toronto, can hardly wait for August. She'll spend it at the Ogilvie's lavish cottage in Muskoka—a whole month of freedom, swimming, adventures with her "cousins"... But this isn't an ordinary summer. It's 1943, and the war is still going on...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century book children family -
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... -
Springtime in a Broken Mirror by Mario Benedetti
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the tradition of Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives, a celebrated classic and heart-wrenching story of a family torn apart by the forces of history, by one of Latin America’s most celebrated writersSpringtime in a Broken Mirror revolves around Santiago, a political prisoner in Uruguay, who was jailed after a brutal military coup that saw many of his comrades flee elsewhere...Categorized as:
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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:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
My Lvov: Holocaust Memoir of a twelve-year-old Girl by Janina Hescheles, Yaroslav Hrytsak
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWhile still twelve years old, Janina Hescheles wrote this harrowing report from her hiding place in Cracow. The notebook, filled with clear childlike writing, was fortunately preserved. She tells about the German occupation of Lvov, the loss of her parents, about the Ghetto and mass murder in the notorious forced-labor camp Janowska in Lvov...Categorized as:
coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
The End of the Hunt by Thomas Flanagan
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSet in Ireland at the time of the Troubles, during the watershed year of 1919, Thomas Flanagan's epic The End of the Hunt chronicles the years following World War I, in which the British attempted to put down once and for all the centuries-old dream of an independent Ireland...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies drama -
Complete Verse by Rudyard Kipling
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWitty, profound, wildly funny, acerbic and occasionally savage, Rudyard Kipling's poems continue to delight readers of all ages. Included are both the familiar favorites and Kipling's lesser-known works. This is the only complete collection of Kipling's poems available in paperback...Categorized as:
classics colonization literary-fiction fiction industrial-era victorian 20th-century anthologies -
The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA Dance to the Music of Time – his brilliant 12-novel sequence, which chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.The novels follow Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool and others, as they negotiate the intellectual, cultural and social hurdles that stand between them and the “Acceptance World...Categorized as:
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The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWith their lives drastically remodeled by World War II, the characters of The Dance to the Music of Time series continue their colorful exploits. Nicholas Jenkins, the narrarator, now in his thirties, is second-lieutenant in an infrantry regiment and life in the army is examined at startingly close range...Categorized as:
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Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPersonal narratives of a British officer on the Western front during World War I...Categorized as:
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The Hunters by James Salter
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWith his stirring, rapturous first novel--originally published in 1956 --James Salter established himself as the most electrifying prose stylist since Hemingway. Four decades later, it is clear that he also fashioned the most enduring fiction ever about aerial warfare...Categorized as:
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The New Confessions by William Boyd
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn this extraordinary novel, William Boyd presents the autobiography of John James Todd, whose uncanny and exhilarating life as one of the most unappreciated geniuses of the twentieth century is equal parts Laurence Stern, Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies, and Saul Bellow, and a hundred percent William Boyd. From his birth in 1899, Todd was doomed...Categorized as:
coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies comedy fiction -
Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare, Arshi Pipa
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMasterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city... -
Lovesick by Ángeles Mastretta
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPublisher: Vintage Date of Publication: 1998 Binding: soft cover Edition: Condition: Fine Description:... -
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:
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