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Dream of Ding Village

Yan Lianke · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

The Death of Ivan Ilych

Leo Tolstoy · 76 pages

Ivan Ilych, a peaceful public official in the Russian provinces, has his life permanently changed by a serious illness which no doctor can accurately diagnose.

BleakTragicTerminal IllnessSatire
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The Death of Ivan Ilych Illustrated

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy · 79 pages

The Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, considered one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s.

Long IllnessBleakTerminal IllnessLiterary Fiction
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Human Acts

Han Kang · 221 pages

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed. The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend who meets his own fateful end to an editor struggling against censorship; to a pri

Ghost NarratorBleakTragicLiterary Fiction
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At Risk

Alice Hoffman · 272 pages

In a novel the Village Voice calls "memorable" and "striking," Alice Hoffman vividly portrays a family shattered by tragedy when eleven-year-old Amanda is diagnosed with AIDS...

Long IllnessTragicTerminal IllnessLiterary Fiction
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The Death of Ivan Ilych

Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, 1828-1910 Gra, Leo Leo Tolstoy · 62 pages

The Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, considered one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s. "Usually classed among the best examples of the novella", The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells the story of a high-court judge, and his sufferings and death from a terminal illness in 19th-century Russia.

Long IllnessTerminal IllnessTragicLiterary Fiction
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A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

Eimear McBride · 228 pages

Eimear McBride's novel tells the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother who is living with the after effects of a brain tunour. Not so much a stream of consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and sensual urges of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist, to read A Girl is a Half-Fo

BleakTerminal IllnessTragicLiterary Fiction
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The Last Letter

Rebecca Yarros · 432 pages

Long IllnessTerminal IllnessTragic
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The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

Leo Tolstoy, Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, 1828-1910 Gra · 142 pages

Terminal IllnessBleakTragicLiterary Fiction
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The Trial

Franz Kafka · 256 pages

BleakTragicSatireLiterary Fiction
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Oxygen

Andrew Miller · 336 pages

Long IllnessTerminal IllnessLiterary Fiction
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Holding the Man

Timothy Conigrave · 304 pages

Long IllnessTerminal IllnessTragic
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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

BleakTragicSatireLiterary Fiction
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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.

BleakTragicSatireLiterary Fiction
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Alice & Oliver

Charles Bock · 416 pages

"Alice Culvert is a force: passionate, independent, smart, and gorgeous, she--to her delight--attracts attention wherever she goes, even amid the buzz of mid-90s New York. In knee-high boots, with her newborn daughter, Doe, strapped to her chest, Alice is one of those people who just seem so vividly alive, which makes her cancer diagnosis feel almost incongruous. How could such a being not go on?

Long IllnessTerminal IllnessLiterary Fiction
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Roseflower Creek

Jackie Lee Miles · 240 pages

Ghost NarratorTragicLiterary Fiction
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Mother Night

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. · 202 pages

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.

BleakTragicLiterary FictionSatire
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The Seventh Day

Yu Hua · 213 pages

Yang Fei was born on a moving train. Lost by his mother, adopted by a young switchman, raised with simplicity and love, he is utterly unprepared for the tempestuous changes that await him and his country. As a young man, he searches for a place to belong in a nation that is ceaselessly reinventing itself, but he remains on the edges of society. At age forty-one, he meets an accidental and unceremo

Ghost NarratorSatireLiterary Fiction
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Revolutionary Road

Richard Yates · 346 pages

BleakTragicSatireLiterary Fiction
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The Orphan Master's Son

Adam Johnson · 456 pages

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea. Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is giv

TragicBleakLiterary FictionSatire
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Feed

M.T. Anderson · 309 pages

For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon—a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage g

Terminal IllnessBleakSatireTragic
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To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life

Herve Guibert · 272 pages

Long IllnessTerminal IllnessLiterary Fiction
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Even the Dogs

Jon McGregor · 195 pages

They break down the door at the end of December and carry his body away. On a still and frozen day between Christmas and New Year, a man's body is found lying in his ruined flat. Found, and then taken away, examined, investigated and cremated.

Ghost NarratorBleakLiterary Fiction
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Inside the O'Briens

Lisa Genova · 343 pages

Patrol officer Joe O'Brien is third-generation Irish in Charlestown. A tough cop with a soft interior, a loving wife and four adult children, Joe is diagnosed with Huntington's disease. As Joe's symptoms worsen and he's eventually stripped of his badge and more, Joe struggles to maintain hope and a sense of purpose, while his daughter Katie and her siblings must find the courage to either live a l

Long IllnessTerminal IllnessLiterary Fiction
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1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

George Orwell · 231 pages

In a grim future where the world is divided into perpetual war and total surveillance, Winston Smith dares to question the absolute power of the Party. In Oceania, even thoughts are monitored, history is rewritten, and truth is whatever Big Brother says it is. Longing for freedom and truth, Winston begins a quiet rebellion—but in a society where independent thought is a crime, even love becomes da

TragicBleakSatireLiterary Fiction

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