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Astonishing the Gods

Ben Okri · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Life of Pi

Yann Martel · 336 pages

After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan… and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary works of fiction in recent years.

Magical RealismIslandSelf-DiscoveryLyrical Prose
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Life Impossible

Matt Haig · 336 pages

Magical RealismIslandSelf-DiscoveryLiterary Fiction
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Daytripper

Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba · 247 pages

Presents key moments in the life of Brás de Oliva Domingos, a Brazilian writer and sometime journalist, and the son of a prominent author, as if each episode would turn out to be the day in which he was about to die.

Magical RealismSelf-DiscoveryLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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From the Mouth of the Whale

Sjon · 251 pages

Magical RealismLyrical ProseIslandLiterary Fiction
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The Magus

John Fowles · 632 pages

A startlingly original novel about a young English graduate who takes a position as a teacher at a private school on a small Greek island. Bored and lonely he spends his free hours wandering alone until he meets a wealthy and mysterious neighbour. Soon he finds himself a victim of this man’s increasingly bizarre psychological games and obsessed with a young woman who may or may not be a willing pa

IslandSelf-DiscoveryMagical RealismLiterary Fiction
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Snake Ropes

Jess Richards · 343 pages

Set in a dystopian but recognizable world on an island off the edge of the map, where women rule and justice is meted out in a mysterious structure called the Thrashing House. When the story begins, Mary is doing her best to protect her younger brother as the sons on the island are mysteriously disappearing, while Morgan is scheming to escape the prison her parents have made of their home. The two

Magical RealismLyrical ProseIslandLiterary Fiction
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A River Called Time

Mia Couto · 231 pages

Mariano, who has lived in the city from an early age, is summoned back to his village to attend his grandfather's funeral...

Magical RealismIslandLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Second Nature

Alice Hoffman · 257 pages

A New York Times bestseller, Second Nature tells the story of a suburban woman, Robin Moore, who discovers her own free spirit through a stranger she brings home to her perfectly ordered neighborhood. As Robin impulsively draws this beautiful, uncivilized man into her world-meanwhile coping with divorce and a troubled teenage son-she begins to question her wisdom and doubt her own heart, and ultim

Magical RealismLyrical ProseIslandLiterary Fiction
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The Girl With Glass Feet

Ali Shaw · 288 pages

Strange things are happening on the remote & snowbound archipelago of St Hauda's Land. Unusual winged creatures flit around icy bogland; albino animals hide themselves in the snow-glazed woods; jellyfish glow in the ocean's depths - and Ida MacLaird is slowly turning into glass.

Magical RealismIslandLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Necklace of Kisses

Francesca Lia Block · 227 pages

Where were the kisses? Weetzie Bat wondered. And so begins a magical journey of discovery. As she turns forty and the relationship with her secret-agent lover-man Max falls apart, Weetzie packs up her lime green and bright orange bikini, orange suede sneakers, and Pucci tunic, jumps in her '65 mint green Thunderbird, and leaves.Weetzie finds herself at the enchanted pink hotel in sparkling Los Ang

Magical RealismLyrical ProseSelf-DiscoveryLiterary Fiction
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The Man with the Compound Eyes

Wu Ming-Yi · 304 pages

On Wayo-wayo, every second son has to sail into the wide sea as sacrifice to the Sea God on the day he turns fifteen. Atile'i is one such boy. Being the strongest swimmer and best sailor on the island, he sets out to defy destiny. His journey takes him across the ocean to a vast and strange island, one which is built of material he's never seen before and devoid of any signs of life.

Magical RealismIslandLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Wonders of a Godless World

Andrew McGahan · 327 pages

IslandMagical RealismLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Paulo Coelho · 210 pages

"The story of a young Spanish woman, Pilar, and her encounter with her lost love, an unnamed spiritual seeker who comes to worship the feminine face of God. Clarke's translation is, as usual, somewhat hurried and condensed as if he's impatient with Coelho's admittedly belabored and self-consciously poetical style"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Magical RealismLyrical ProseSelf-DiscoveryLiterary Fiction
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The Ten Thousand Things

Maria Dermout · 244 pages

IslandMagical RealismLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?

Johan Harstad · 524 pages

Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion opens with the line: "The person you love is 72.8% water, and it hasn't rained for weeks." From there, Brage Award winning author and playwright tells the story of Mattias, a thirty-something gardener living in Stavanger, Norway, whose idol is Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon: the man who was willing to stand in Neil Armstrong's shadow in o

IslandSelf-DiscoveryLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Little Nothing

Marisa Silver · 352 pages

In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and scorn from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no farther than the edge of her crib. When

Magical RealismSelf-DiscoveryLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Circe

Madeline Miller · 408 pages

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. Threatened, Zeus b

Lyrical ProseIslandSelf-DiscoveryLiterary Fiction
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Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison · 338 pages

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s ori

Magical RealismLyrical ProseSelf-DiscoveryLiterary Fiction
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The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Haruki Marukami · 449 pages

Magical RealismSelf-DiscoveryLiterary FictionLyrical Prose
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Chaos of the Senses

Ahlam Mosteghanemi · 302 pages

In the midst of the Algerian civil war, Hayat is a young novelist trapped in a loveless marriage. While her husband, a high-ranking officer, preoccupies himself with politics, Hayat finds freedom from her highly regimented life in the world of her writing. There she weaves a passionate story for her characters. But the line between fiction and reality blurs when she falls for a man who seems to ha

Lyrical ProseMagical RealismSelf-DiscoveryLiterary Fiction
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In the Country of the Young

Lisa Carey · 288 pages

Magical RealismIslandLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Magical RealismSelf-DiscoveryLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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The City and Its Uncertain Walls

村上春樹 · 416 pages

Magical RealismSelf-DiscoveryLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Ero Amelia Earhart

Jane Mendelsohn · 158 pages

IslandLyrical ProseMagical RealismLiterary Fiction
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