Books like 'The Temple'
Readers who enjoyed The Temple by Stephen Spender also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary 20th century europe england germany urban western-central-europe lgbtq literary-fiction classics
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The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsRichard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate and accomplished writers of America's post-war generation... -
![The Collected Poems, 1957-1987 by Octavio Paz]()
The Collected Poems, 1957-1987 by Octavio Paz
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNobel Laureate Octavio Paz is incontestably Latin America's foremost poet. The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz is a landmark bilingual gathering of all the poetry he has published in book form since 1952, the year of his premier long poem, Sunstone (Piedra de Sol)―here translated anew by Eliot Weinberger―made its appearance...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction fiction anthologies 20th-century poc-mc contemporary literary -
![Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver]()
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWith this, his first collection, Carver breathed new life into the short story. In the pared-down style that has since become his hallmark, Carver showed us how humour and tragedy dwelt in the hearts of ordinary people, and won a readership that grew with every subsequent brilliant collection of stories, poems and essays that appeared in the last eleven years of his life...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
![What Work Is by Philip Levine]()
What Work Is by Philip Levine
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWinner of the National Book Award in 1991 “This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America. These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin’s First-Rate Plumbing and Plating...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
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![The Sweet Cheat Gone by Marcel Proust]()
The Sweet Cheat Gone by Marcel Proust
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLarge format paper back for easy reading... -
![Beatles by Lars Saabye Christensen]()
Beatles by Lars Saabye Christensen
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBeatles is the story of Kim Karlsen and his three buddies, Gunnar, Ola and Seb - and, yes, they occasionally like to think of themselves as the Fab Four. They were born in 1951, and the story starts with the first wave of Beatlemania in Norway, in the spring of 1965...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook bildungsroman book contemporary -
![Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich]()
Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 20 ratings"I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail." These provocative poems move with the power of Rich's distinctive voice... -
![The Life Before Us by Romain Gary]()
The Life Before Us by Romain Gary
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe Life Before Us is a novel by French author Romain Gary who wrote it under the pseudonym of "Emile Ajar". It was originally published in English as Momo then re-published in 1986 as The Life Before Us...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age europe literary-fiction urban western-central-europe 20th-century audiobook -
![On the Road: the Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac]()
On the Road: the Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published as Kerouac originally composed it IN THREE WEEKS in April of 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his first full draft of On the Road—typed as a single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper, which he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age lgbtq literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![Crystal Boys by Pai Hsien-yung]()
Crystal Boys by Pai Hsien-yung
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsCrystal Boys is the first Chinese novel on gay themes. A-qing, the adolescent hero, comes from an impoverished family. His father casts him out after learning that his son is gay. A-qing drifts into New Park, a gay hangout in Taipei, and begins his life as a hustler... -
![The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon]()
The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis first volume of The Collected Plays of Neil Simon contains the triumphs that put his unique brand of comic genius on the American stage, and made him the most successful playwright of his generation... -
![What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg]()
What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhat Makes Sammy Run?Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symp-toms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick... -
![Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel]()
Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIt is always "earthquake weather" in Amy Hempel's California, a landscape where everything can change without warning. Traditional resources—home, parents, lovers, friends, even willpower—are not dependable. And so the characters in these short, compelling stories have learned to depend on small triumphs of wit, irony, and spirit...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary female-author fiction -
![The World According to Garp by John Irving]()
The World According to Garp by John Irving
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsThis is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes—even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow"; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age europe lgbtq literary-fiction urban western-central-europe 20th-century -
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![The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth]()
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... -
![Clover's Child by Amanda Prowse]()
Clover's Child by Amanda Prowse
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFrom the million-copy bestseller Amanda Prowse, the queen of heartbreak fiction. Amanda Prowse is the author of The Coordinates Of Loss and the no.1 bestsellers Perfect Daughter, My Husband's Wife and What Have I Done? When eighteen-year-old Dot meets Sol, she feels that love has arrived at last... -
![Women and Men by Joseph McElroy]()
Women and Men by Joseph McElroy
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBeginning in childbirth and entered like a multiple dwelling in motion, Women and Men embraces and anatomizes the 1970s in New York from experiments in the chaotic relations between the sexes to the flux of the city itself... -
![Putting on the Ritz by Joe Keenan]()
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![Zenobia by Gellu Naum]()
Zenobia by Gellu Naum
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOne of the best-known novels by prolific Romanian avant-garde writer Gelu Naum, Zenobia is the evocation of the singular quest of a Surrealist knight-errant who strives to be true to the gentle demands of his lady in a landscape of snares, desolation, incipient madness, and material poverty magically interrupted by moments of extreme beauty... -
![Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories by Grace Paley]()
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories by Grace Paley
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSeventeen stories written over the past fifteen years reveal the author's vision of human love and tragedy...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary female-author fiction -
![Selected Stories by Robert Walser, Susan Sontag]()
Selected Stories by Robert Walser, Susan Sontag
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsHow to place the mysterious Swiss writer Robert Walser, a humble genius who possessed one of the most elusive and surprising sensibilities in modern literature? Walser is many things: a Paul Klee in words, maker of droll, whimsical, tender, and heartbreaking verbal artifacts; an inspiration to such very different writers as Kafka and W.G...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
![Nexus by Henry Miller]()
Nexus by Henry Miller
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNexus is the third volume of the scandalous trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, Henry Miller's major life workThe exhilarating final volume of Henry Miller's semi-autobiographical trilogy, Nexus follows his last months in New York. Trapped in a bizarre ménage-à-trois with his fiery wife Mona and her lover Stasia, he finds his life descending into chaos... -
![Short Cuts: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver]()
Short Cuts: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe nine stories and one poem collected in this volume formed the basis for the astonishingly original film “Short Cuts” directed by Robert Altman. Collected altogether in this volume, these stories form a searing and indelible portrait of American innocence and loss...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
![The Fairy Gunmother by Daniel Pennac]()
The Fairy Gunmother by Daniel Pennac
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsMaybe the worst indignity for a Paris cop is to be shot dead by an old granny he is trying to help cross the street in Paris on a frosty morning. An old lady needs protection with so many druggies around these days. Dressed as an elderly Vietnamese woman, Inspector Van Thian goes to investigate... -
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![Swan Song by John Galsworthy]()
Swan Song by John Galsworthy
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratings1928. English novelist, playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932, Galsworthy became known for his portrayal of the British upper middle class and for his social satire. To readers of Galsworthy there is a special significance in this novel for it marks the passing of Soames Forsyte and brings the annals of the Forsyte family to an end... -
![Mockingbird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski]()
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsMockingbird Wish Me Luck captures glimpses of Charles Bukowski's view on life through his poignant poetry: the pain, the hate, the love, and the beauty. He writes of lechery and pain while finding still being able to find its beauty... -
![El Camino by Miguel Delibes]()
El Camino by Miguel Delibes
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsUpon entering the Royal Spanish Academy in 1975, Miguel Delibes delivered an address which reclaimed El Camino (1950) for the emerging Green movement...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook book contemporary drama -
![The Centre of My World by Andreas Steinhöfel]()
The Centre of My World by Andreas Steinhöfel
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSeventeen-year-old Phil has felt like an outsider as long as he can remember. All Phil has ever known about his father is that he was Number Three on his mother's list - third in a series of affairs that have set Phil's family even further apart from the critical townspeople across the river...Categorized as:
europe western-central-europe germany lgbtq coming-of-age literary-fiction romance young-adult -
![Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Duncker]()
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... -
![West of Rome by John Fante]()
West of Rome by John Fante
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWest of Rome's two novellas, "My Dog Stupid" and "The Orgy," fulfill the promise of their rousing titles. The latter novella opens with virtuoso description: "His name was Frank Gagliano, and he did not believe in God. He was that most singular and startling craftsman of the building trade-a left-handed bricklayer... -
![Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant, Lorna Raver]()
Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant, Lorna Raver
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsMavis Gallant is an undisputed master of the short story whose peerless prose captures the range of human experience while evoking time and place with unequaled skill. This new collection of 15 of Gallant's stories, edited by best-selling author Michael Ondaatje, gathers the best of her many stories set in Europe and Paris, where Gallant has long lived... -
![Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips]()
Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPhillips writes stories that lay bare the suffering and joy of men and women who rarely register in our literature. Here are the abused and the abandoned, the violent and the passive, the impoverished and the disenfranchised who populate the small towns and rural byways of the country. A patron of the arts reserves his fondest feeling for the one man who wants it least...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary female-author -
![The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle]()
The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Fan Man is a comic novel published in 1974 by the American writer William Kotzwinkle. It is told in the first-person by the narrator, Horse Badorties, a down-at-the-heels hippie living a life of drug-fueled befuddlement in New York City c. 1970... -
![The Thirtieth Year: Stories by Ingeborg Bachmann]()
The Thirtieth Year: Stories by Ingeborg Bachmann
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis is collection of the stories written by a distinguished Austrian author who died in 1973. Reading these stories entails abandoning the terms of one's own comfort. The author's relentless vision demands that readers allows themselves to be hypnotised, taken over by her repetitive cadences and burning images of grief and loss...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction fiction 20th-century contemporary female-author anthologies literary -
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![The Sound of My Voice by Ron Butlin]()
The Sound of My Voice by Ron Butlin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMorris Magellan has a house in the suburbs, nice wife and kids. But Morris is also a chronic alcoholic, heading fast towards self-destruction. Morris is not hoping to meet Ms. Right and acquire the two kids that will straighten everything out. He already has all this and it hasn't kept him off the bottle... -
![The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman]()
The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThis scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages... -
![Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran]()
Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne of the most important works of gay literature, this haunting, brilliant novel is a seriocomic remembrance of things past -- and still poignantly present. It depicts the adventures of Malone, a beautiful young man searching for love amid New York's emerging gay scene... -
![The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt]()
The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDavid Leavitt's extraordinary first novel, now reissued in paperback, is a seminal work about family, sexual identity, home, and loss. Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, The Lost Language of Cranes tells the story of twenty-five-year-old Philip, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man... -
![The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks]()
The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn this bestselling classic novel which became a famous film, Jane Graham, alone and pregnant, retreats to a dingy attic bedsit in Fulham where she finds unexpected companionship, happiness and love... -
![The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud]()
The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWinner of the National Book Award for FictionBernard Malamud's first book of short stories, The Magic Barrel, has been recognized as a classic from the time it was published in 1959...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction urban 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
![Three Trapped Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante]()
Three Trapped Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCabrera Infante's masterpiece, Three Trapped Tigers is one of the most playful books to reach the U.S. from Cuba. Filled with puns, wordplay, lists upon lists, and Sternean typography--such as the section entitled "Some Revelations," which consists of several blank pages--this novel has been praised as a more modern, sexier, funnier, Cuban Ulysses...Categorized as:
classics lgbtq literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book contemporary -
![Querelle of Brest by Jean Genet]()
Querelle of Brest by Jean Genet
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsQuerelle of Brest was first published anonymously in 1947 and limited to 460 numbered copies. It is set in the midst of the port town of Brest, where sailors and the sea are associated with murder. Its protagonist, Georges Querelle, is a bisexual thief, prostitute, and serial killer who manipulates and kills his lovers for thrills and profit... -
![Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas]()
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe 'Young Dog' of the title is of course Thomas himself, & this volume of autobiographical stories by the great modern poet, who shows his waggish humor at its best, his exuberance & verbal magic in spectacular display. It also shows him a spinner of tales & a creator of memorable characters...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction high-school -
![Solo Faces by James Salter]()
Solo Faces by James Salter
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThis novel exposes the obsession that draws climbers away from civilization to test themselves against the most intimidating and inaccessible mountains in the world.James Salter captures the adventure of Gary, a roofer of churches, who feels restrained by conventions and flat ground. Unable to find happiness in his life, he travels to southern France to climb to the summits of the Alps...Categorized as:
europe western-central-europe literary-fiction classics france fiction action-adventure sports -
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![Stories and Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett]()
Stories and Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis volume brings together three of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett’s major short stories and thirteen shorter pieces of fiction that he calls “texts for nothing.” Here, as in all his work, Beckett relentlessly strips away all but the essential to arrive at a core of truth. His prose reveals the same mastery that marks his work from Waiting for Godot and Endgame to Molloy and Malone Dies...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction literary -
![The Flight of Icarus by Raymond Queneau]()
The Flight of Icarus by Raymond Queneau
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn late 19th-century Paris, the writer Hubert is shocked to discover that Icarus, the protagonist of the new novel he's working on, has vanished. Looking for him among the manuscripts of his rivals does not solve the mystery, so a detective is hired to find the runaway character... -
![The History Boys by Alan Bennett]()
The History Boys by Alan Bennett
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport, and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age lgbtq literary-fiction romantic-love 20th-century 21st-century audiobook -
![A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham]()
A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsMichael Cunningham’s celebrated novel is the story of two boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely, introspective, and unsure of himself; and Bobby, hip, dark, and inarticulate. In New York after college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his roommate, Clare, a veteran of the city's erotic wars. Bobby and Clare fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father Clare's child...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age lgbtq literary-fiction urban 20th-century audiobook bildungsroman -
![The Commitments by Roddy Doyle]()
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsBarrytown, Dublin, has something to sing about. The Commitments are spreading the gospel of the soul. Ably managed by Jimmy Rabbitte, brilliantly coached by Joey 'The Lips' Fagan, their twin assault on Motown and Barrytown takes them by leaps and bounds from the parish hall to the steps of the studio door... -
![White People by Allan Gurganus]()
White People by Allan Gurganus
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn these eleven stories, Allan Gurganus—author of the highly acclaimed Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All—gives heartbreaking and hilarious voice to the fears, desires and triumphs of a grand cast of Americans...Categorized as:
coming-of-age lgbtq literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary dark
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