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Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

Shehan Karunatilaka · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson · 204 pages

Maverick author Hunter S. Thompson introduced the world to "gonzo journalism" with this cult classic that shot back up the best seller lists after Thompson's suicide in 2005. No book ever written has more perfectly captured the spirit of the 1960s counterculture. In Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, Raoul Duke (Thompson) and his attorney Dr. Gonzo (inspired by a friend of Thompson) are quickly

Unreliable NarratorAddictionSubstance AbuseDark Comedy
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Choke

Chuck Palahniuk · 304 pages

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be "saved" by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, go on to send checks to support him. When he's not pulling this

Substance AbuseAddictionUnreliable NarratorDark Comedy
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Women

Charles Bukowski · 297 pages

Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that woul

Substance AbuseAddictionDark ComedyCharacter-Driven
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The Rules of Attraction

Bret Easton Ellis · 283 pages

First Sentence: “And it’s a story that might bore you, but you don’t have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or actually weekend, really a Friday, in September, and Camden, and this was three or four years ago, and she got so drunk that she ended up in bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin

Substance AbuseUnreliable NarratorAddictionDark Comedy
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Martyr!

Kaveh Akbar · 352 pages

Cyrus Shams is lost. Ever since his mother’s plane was senselessly shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby, Cyrus has been grappling with her death. Now, newly sober, he is set to learn the truth of her life. When an encounter with a dying artist leads Cyrus towards the mysteries of his past - an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as an Angel of Death, a haun

Substance AbuseAddictionDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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Animals

Emma Jane Unsworth · 249 pages

You know how it is. Saturday afternoon. You wake up and you can't move. I blinked and the floaters on my eyeballs shifted to reveal Tyler in her ratty old kimono over in the doorway. 'Way I see it,' she said, glass in one hand, lit cigarette in the other, 'girls are tied to beds for two reasons: sex and exorcisms. So, which was it with you?' Laura and Tyler are best friends who live together, angr

AddictionDark ComedySubstance AbuseCharacter-Driven
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Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh · 352 pages

Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.

Substance AbuseDark ComedyAddictionLiterary Fiction
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Jernigan

David Gates

AddictionSubstance AbuseUnreliable NarratorDark Comedy
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Barney's Version

Mordecai Richler · 416 pages

Barney Panofsky smokes too many cigars, drinks too much whiskey, and is obsessed with two things: the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and his ex-wife Miriam. An acquaintance from his youthful years in Paris, Terry McIver, is about to publish his autobiography. In its pages he accuses Barney of an assortment of sins, including murder. It's time, Barney decides, to present the world with his own vers

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
❤️

The Anatomy Lesson

Philip Roth · 291 pages

AddictionSubstance AbuseDark ComedyCharacter-Driven
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The Epicure's Lament

Kate Christensen · 351 pages

For ten years, Hugo Whittier, upper-class scion, former gigolo, failed belle-lettrist has been living a hermit's existence at Waverly, his family's crumbling mansion overlooking the Hudson. He passes the time reading Montaigne and M.F.K. Fisher, cooking himself delicious meals, smoking an endless number of cigarettes, and nursing a grudge against the world. But his older brother, Dennis, has ret

Dark ComedySubstance AbuseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace · 1,088 pages

A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connec

Substance AbuseAddictionDark ComedyCharacter-Driven
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I See You've Called in Dead

John Kenney · 294 pages

AddictionSubstance AbuseDark ComedyCharacter-Driven
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The Cider House Rules

John Irving · 573 pages

Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--obstetrician and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Clouds. It is also the story of his favorite orphan, Homer, who is never adopted.

AddictionSubstance AbuseLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey · 311 pages

An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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Based on a True Story

Norm Macdonald · 256 pages

Fictional Memoir. A Novel containing scattered facts which are interleaved into fictional stories creating a journey through a fictional memoir of the author, which includes growing up in rural Canada, his SNL (TV show) days and many other anecdotes. This is an adventure and a retrospective of life. A humoristic literary work with a very unique style, matching the author's comedic and reflective

AddictionUnreliable NarratorDark ComedyFirst Person Narrator
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The Untouchable

John Banville · 410 pages

(From the Hardcover edition) Twenty years after his "retirement," ex-spy Victor Maskell attempts to come to terms with what has happened to his life by embarking on his memoirs. This is the plot which fuels Banville's stunning new novel--a story that goes beyond the mere facts of espionage to penetrate the intricate heart of the spy.

Elderly ProtagonistUnreliable NarratorCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Rachel's Holiday

Marian Keyes · 570 pages

RACHEL'S HOLIDAY, Marian's classic novel about addiction, is being given a new lease of life with a fantastic new jacket treatment. Here's Rachel Walsh, twenty-seven and the miserable owner of size 8 feet. She has regular congress with Luke Costello, a man who wears his leather trousers tight. And she's fond - some might say too fond - of recreational drugs. Until she finds herself being frogmarch

AddictionSubstance AbuseDark ComedyCharacter-Driven
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The Misfortunates

Dimitri Verhulst · 199 pages

"Sobriety and moderation are alien concepts to the men in Dimmy's family. Useless in all other respects, his three uncles have a rare talent for drinking, a flair for violence, and an unwavering commitment to the pub. And his father Pierre is no slouch either. Within hours of his son's birth, Pierre plucks him from the maternity ward, props him on his bike, and takes him on an introductory tour of

Substance AbuseAddictionDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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Eileen

Ottessa Moshfegh · 266 pages

"A lonely young woman working in a boys' prison outside Boston in the early 60s is pulled into a very strange crime, in a mordant, harrowing story of obsession and suspense"--

AddictionUnreliable NarratorDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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Up in the Air

Walter Kirn · 311 pages

Ryan Bingham's job as a Career Transition Counselor--he fires people--has kept him airborne for years. Although he has come to despise his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls "Airworld," finding contentment within pressurized cabins, anonymous hotel rooms, and a wardrobe of wrinkle-free slacks. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss's desk, and the hope of a jo

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon · 240 pages

This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. Christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. When Christohper decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog, his mystery st

Unreliable NarratorDark ComedyCharacter-DrivenFirst Person Narrator
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Me and Kaminski

Daniel Kehlmann · 195 pages

Confronting a series of personal, romantic, and professional failures, Sebastian Zollner prepares to interview Manuel Kaminski, an eccentric and legendary painter living in seclusion as he loses his sight, with the intent of writing a definitive biography of the artist.

Unreliable NarratorElderly ProtagonistDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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The Sympathizer

Viet Thanh Nguyen · 384 pages

Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles.

Dark ComedyUnreliable NarratorLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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