Books like 'Words'
Readers who enjoyed Words by Jean-Paul Sartre also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
20th century psychological classics existentialism university philosophical
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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 existentialism philosophical 20th-century adult audiobook book contemporary -
![When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom]()
When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsIn 19th-century Vienna, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment that defined the era.Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him... -
![Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, John Updike]()
Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, John Updike
Rated: 4.34 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsThe only available collection that brings together all of Kafka's storiesthose published during his lifetime and those released after his death...Categorized as:
classics existentialism philosophical university 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary -
![The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov]()
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsFrom the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and 1950s, these sixty-five tales—eleven of which have been translated into English for the first time—display all the shades of Nabokov's imagination...Categorized as:
classics existentialism philosophical university 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook -
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![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 . .Categorized as:
classics philosophical university 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
![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... -
![Hunger by Knut Hamsun]()
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsOne of the most important and controversial writers of the 20th century, Knut Hamsun made literary history with the publication in 1890 of this powerful, autobiographical novel recounting the abject poverty, hunger and despair of a young writer struggling to achieve self-discovery and its ultimate artistic expression... -
![No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsJean-Paul Sartre, the great French existentialist, displays his mastery of drama in NO EXIT, an unforgettable portrayal of hell.The play is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for all eternity...Categorized as:
classics existentialism philosophical university 20th-century action-adventure adult afterlife -
![The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot]()
The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper." 'The Hollow Men' is a poem by T. S. Eliot written in 1925, divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines. Eliot's New York Times obituary in 1965 identified the final four as "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English"...Categorized as:
classics existentialism university fiction 20th-century historical philosophy psychological -
![A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka]()
A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsThe last book published during Kafka's lifetime, A Hunger Artist (1924) explores many of the themes that were close to him: spiritual poverty, asceticism, futility, and the alienation of the modern artist. He edited the manuscript just before his death, and these four stories are some of his best known and most powerful work, marking his maturity as a writer...Categorized as:
classics existentialism philosophical university 20th-century absurdism adult anthologies -
![Crave by Sarah Kane]()
Crave by Sarah Kane
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in an unnamed city from which voices and images spring, Crave charts the disintegration of a human mind under the pressures of love, loss and desire.Produced by Paines Plough and Bright Ltd (Guy Chapman and Paul Spyker), Crave premiered at the Traverse Theatre for the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. It received its English premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London in September 1998... -
![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 existentialism philosophical 20th-century anthologies europe 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... -
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![The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir]()
The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThree long stories that draw the reader into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises...Categorized as:
classics existentialism philosophical university 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary -
![No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsIn these four plays, Jean-Paul Sartre, the great existentialist novelist and philosopher, displays his mastery of drama. NO EXIT is an unforgettable portrayal of hell. THE FLIES is a modern reworking of the Electra-Orestes story. DIRTY HANDS is about a young intellectual torn between theory and praxis. THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE is an attack on American racism...Categorized as:
classics existentialism philosophical university 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary -
![Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti]()
Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Auto-da-Fé" is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Vienna between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destruction... -
![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... -
![The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
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... -
![The Floating Opera and The End of the Road by John Barth]()
The Floating Opera and The End of the Road by John Barth
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels. Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions... -
![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... -
![Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion]()
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsA ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader... -
![The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq]()
The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHaving made his name with an exhibition of photographs of Michelin roadmaps – beautiful works that won praise from every corner of the art world – Jed Martin is now emerging from a ten-year hiatus. And he has had some good news... -
![A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe]()
A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsKenzaburō Ōe, the winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, is internationally acclaimed as one of the most important and influential post-World War II writers, known for his powerful accounts of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and his own struggle to come to terms with a mentally handicapped son... -
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![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 -
![Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsNausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him... -
![La coscienza di Zeno. Senilità. Una vita by Italo Svevo]()
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![Despair by Vladimir Nabokov]()
Despair by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 20 ratings'A work of rapture - jolting, hilarious and incredibly racy' Martin Amis, The TimesSelf-satisfied, delighting in the many fascinating quirks of his own personality, Hermann Hermann is perhaps not to be taken too seriously. But then a chance meeting with Felix, a man he believes to be his double, reveals a frightening 'split' in Hermann's nature... -
![Contempt by Alberto Moravia, Tim Parks]()
Contempt by Alberto Moravia, Tim Parks
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsContempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous ~~ his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage... -
![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... -
![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 existentialism philosophical university 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook -
![Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe]()
Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe narrator of this funny and poignant novel is searching for meaning, going back to his childhood, onto the web and off to New York to find it. He writes lists, obsesses over the nature of time, and finds joy in bouncing balls--all in an effort to find out how best to live life. An utterly enchanting meditation on experience, Naive. Super was a #1 best-seller in Erlend Loe's native Norway... -
![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... -
![Ignorance by Milan Kundera]()
Ignorance by Milan Kundera
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA man and a woman meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier when they had chosen to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence "their memories no longer match...Categorized as:
classics existentialism philosophical 20th-century 21st-century adult audiobook book -
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![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... -
![Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine) by André Malraux]()
Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine) by André Malraux
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAs explosive and immediate today as when it was originally published in 1933, Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine), an account of a crucial episode in the early days of the Chinese Revolution, foreshadows the contemporary world and brings to life the profound meaning of the revolutionary impulse for the individuals involved... -
![La condena by Franz Kafka]()
La condena by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"The judgment" is considered the most autobiographical of Kafka's stories. First, there are Kafka's own commentaries and entries in his diary...Categorized as:
classics existentialism philosophical university 20th-century absurdism adult audiobook -
![The Following Story by Cees Nooteboom]()
The Following Story by Cees Nooteboom
Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsHerman Mussert went to bed last night in Amsterdam and wakes in Lisbon in a hotel room where he slept with another man’s wife more than twenty years ago. Winner of the European Literary Prize for Best Novel, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Translated by Ina Rilke... -
![The Homecoming by Harold Pinter]()
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
Rated: 3.70 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsIn an old and slightly seedy house in North London there lives a family of men: Max, the aging but still aggressive patriarch; his younger, ineffectual brother Sam; and two of Max's three sons, neither of whom is marriedLenny, a small-time pimp, and Joey, who dreams of success as a boxer... -
![Amerika by Franz Kafka, E.L. Doctorow]()
Amerika by Franz Kafka, E.L. Doctorow
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsKafka's first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story of the young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing sexual misadventure, finds himself "packed off to America" by his parents. Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures... -
![A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka]()
A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWritten during the winter of 1916-17 when Kafka was living in one of the tiny houses on Golden Lane (formerly Alchimistengasse) at Prague Castle, and published in spring 1920 by Kurt Wolff Verlag, the 14 short fictions comprising this volume are interconnected by a persistent exploration of identity, where even animals anthropomorphize into a new identity...Categorized as:
classics existentialism university 20th-century absurdism adult anthologies audiobook -
![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...Categorized as:
classics existentialism philosophical 20th-century adult audiobook book contemporary -
![Seize the Day by Saul Bellow]()
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsDeftly interweaving humor and pathos, Saul Bellow evokes in the climactic events of one day the full drama of one man's search to affirm his own worth and humanity... -
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![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 existentialism philosophical 20th-century adult animals anthologies audiobook
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