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Darkness at Noon

Arthur Koestler · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

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❤️

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess · 188 pages

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Na

PrisonFreedom vs ControlPropagandaSurveillance State
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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

Freedom vs ControlPolitical CorruptionPrisonPropaganda
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Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell

A great modern classic of Negative Utopia, with chilling implications for our own time.

Freedom vs ControlPolitical CorruptionPropagandaSurveillance State
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The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood · 352 pages

Freedom vs ControlPropagandaSurveillance StatePolitical Corruption
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1984 : George Orwell

George GEORGE ORWELL · 310 pages

Nineteen Eighty-Four, often referred to as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by the English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime.

Freedom vs ControlSurveillance StatePropagandaPolitical Corruption
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera · 314 pages

A young woman obsessed with a man torn between his love for her and his womanizing; one of his mistresses and her faithful lover--these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel.

Freedom vs ControlSurveillance StatePropagandaPolitical Corruption
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Child 44

Tom Rob Smith · 480 pages

A propulsive, relentless page-turner.A terrifying evocation of a paranoid world where no one can be trusted.A surprising, unexpected story of love and family, of hope and resilience.CHILD 44 is a thriller unlike any you have ever read."There is no crime."Stalin's Soviet Union strives to be a paradise for its workers, providing for all of their needs. One of its fundamental pillars is that its cit

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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 174 pages

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Iv

PrisonFreedom vs ControlBleakPropaganda
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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.

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All the King's Men

Robert Penn Warren · 490 pages

The story is about Willie Stark, a slick politician of humble birth, who was based on real-life Huey Long, a Louisiana governor, but the real main character is Jack Burden, a reporter who serves to narrate the story and Stark's rise to power.

Political CorruptionFall From GracePolitical IntrigueBleak
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The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

John le Carre · 240 pages

*The Spy Who Came in from the Cold* is a 1963 Cold War spy novel by the British author John le Carré. It depicts Alec Leamas, a British intelligence officer, being sent to East Germany as a faux defector to sow disinformation about a powerful East German intelligence officer. It serves as a sequel to le Carré's previous novels *Call for the Dead* and *A Murder of Quality,* which also featured the

Fall From GraceTragicSurveillance StatePolitical Intrigue
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Julius Caesar

William Shakespeare · 136 pages

Political CorruptionPropagandaFreedom vs ControlFall From Grace
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The Jungle

Upton Sinclair · 342 pages

Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was c

Political CorruptionFall From GracePropagandaTragic
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The Trial

Franz Kafka · 256 pages

Freedom vs ControlSurveillance StatePolitical CorruptionTragic
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Mockingjay

Suzanne Collins · 408 pages

The last book in the Hunger Games Series. This book is filled with excitement and action regarding the ongoing war with the capital.

PropagandaPolitical CorruptionTragicSurveillance State
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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

Freedom vs ControlPrisonBleakClassics
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Revolutionary Road

Richard Yates · 346 pages

Fall From GraceFreedom vs ControlBleakClassics
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Mephisto

Klaus Mann · 267 pages

PropagandaFall From GracePolitical CorruptionFreedom vs Control
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The Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick · 249 pages

The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. Published and set in 1962, the novel takes place fifteen years after an alternative ending to World War II, and concerns intrigues between the victorious Axis Powers—primarily, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany—as they rule over the former United States, as well as daily life under the resulting totalitarian

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Catch-22

Joseph Heller · 463 pages

*Catch-22* is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original. Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off Italy, *Catch-22* is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousan

Freedom vs ControlPolitical CorruptionTragicNonlinear Narrative
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Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Jung Chang · 544 pages

"Jung Chang vividly evokes China's sights, sounds, and smells to create what must be one of the grimmest, yet most perceptive accounts of growing up middle-class in the maelstrom that has swept China since the 1920s." - Back cover.

PropagandaFreedom vs ControlSurveillance StatePolitical Corruption
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V for Vendetta

Alan Moore · 296 pages

A seminal graphic novel that defined sophisticated storytelling, Alan Moore's best-selling V For Vendetta is a terrifying portrait of totalitarianism and resistance, superbly illustrated by artist David Lloyd. The graphic novel that inspired the hit movie V For Vendetta is a powerful story about loss of freedom and individuality.Set in a futuristic totalitarian England, a country without political

Freedom vs ControlPropagandaSurveillance StateBleak
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Anthem

Ayn Rand · 93 pages

Anthem is a tale of a future dark age of the great “we” – a world that deprives individuals of name, independence, and values. He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world he dared to love the woman of his choice. In an age that had lost all traces of science and civilization he had the courage to seek and find knowledge. But these were not the crimes for which he would be hunte

Freedom vs ControlPropagandaSurveillance StateClassics

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