🧲 Books like this
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years
Thomas Mann · 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
Include books by the same authorChoke
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
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.
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
Money
Martin Amis · 368 pages
An anti-hero to beat them all, John Self is a dissipated connoisseur of self-gratification. Addicted to porn, fast-food and money, he lives a culture-less high-life in New York and London, groping his way through a world of all-day hangovers, barely remembered debaucheries and desires that are both pointless and insatiable. In this hilariously grotesque black comedy Amis explores the back streets
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.
Going Postal
Terry Pratchett · 416 pages
Suddenly, condemned arch-swindler Moist von Lipwig found himself with a noose around his neck and dropping through a trapdoor into ... a government job? By all rights, Moist should be meeting his maker rather than being offered a position as Postmaster by Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork. Getting the moribund Postal Service up and running again, however, may prove an impossible task, w
The Golden Calf
Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov · 340 pages
"Золотой телёнок" - продолжение легендарного романа "Двенадцать стульев", в котором по воле авторов "воскрес" их любимый герой - обаятельный и находчивый аферист Остап Бендер. На этот раз, мечтая взять разом пятьсот тысяч "на блюдечке с голубой каемочкой" и уехать в Рио-де-Жанейро, Бендер решает отобрать часть состояния у подпольного миллионера Корейко... Какой из "400 сравнительно честных способ
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray · 699 pages
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles - military and domestic - are fought, fo
A Rogue's Life
Wilkie Collins · 134 pages
Propelled into society by his ever-hopeful father, Frank Softly is introduced to a variety of professions in order to make his fortune. Not industrious by nature, however, Frank finds working life a challenge, and by his twenty-fifth birthday, he has failed medicine, portrait-painting, caricaturing, and even forgery. Disenchanted with life, he despairs of ever finding something to commit to -- unt
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
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith · 256 pages
The first of the acclaimed Ripley novels, this clever psychological thriller introduces the reader to Tom Ripley and his extraordinary modus operandi. Accepting a commission from a wealthy businessman to travel to Italy in an attempt to convince his wayward son to return to the United States, Ripley gradually develops a plan to assume the young man’s identity along with his bank account.
The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga · 304 pages
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.
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
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole · 400 pages
A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero is one Ignatius J. Reilly, "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures."
Yellowface
R F Kuang · 331 pages
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel. Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But At
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.
Notes from Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Christian Redl, Norman Dietz · 155 pages
Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes — moral, religious, political and social — that dominated Dostoyevsky's later works.
Elmer Gantry
Sinclair Lewis · 434 pages
Elmer Gantry is one of the Sinclair Lewis's most famous novels. Considered scandalous in its day, it is a vicious satire of preachers and those they fool. Gantry has no redeeming features but is seen by the gullible public as a man who speaks the truth about God. Of course he could just as easily have been a lawyer or a politician and the heart of Lewis's satire is how easily people believe what t
The Tailor Of Panama
John le Carre
Harry Pendel is the charismatic proprietor and guiding genius of a top Panama City tailoring firm. Andrew Osnard is an Old Etonian and spy, his mission is to keep a watchful eye on political manoeuvrings leading up to the handing over of the Panama Canal. Originally published: London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.