What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorSlumberland
Paul Beatty · 256 pages
The hip break-out novel from 2016 Man Booker Prize winning author, Paul Beatty, about a disaffected Los Angeles DJ who travels to post-Wall Berlin in search of his transatlantic doppelganger. Hailed by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best writers of his generation, Paul Beatty turns his creative eye to man's search for meaning and identity in an increasingly chaotic w
Kingsblood Royal
Sinclair Lewis · 348 pages
"A neglected tour de force by the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature, Kingsblood Royal is a stirring and wickedly funny portrait of a man who "resigns from the white race." When Neil Kingsblood - a typical middle-American banker with a comfortable life - makes the shocking discovery that he has African-American blood, the odyssey that ensues creates an unforgettable portrayal of t
Mumbo Jumbo
Ishmael Reed · 223 pages
Spanning a dizzying host of genres, from cinema to academia to mythology, Mumbo Jumbo is a lively ride through a key decade of American history the 1920's. In addition to ragtime, blues, and jazz, Reed's allegory draws on the Harlem Renaissance, the Back to Africa movement, and America's occupation of Haiti. His style throughout is as avant-garde and vibrant as the music at its center. From New Or
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
Welcome to Braggsville
T. Geronimo Johnson · 384 pages
"From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of Hold it 'Til it Hurts comes a dark and socially provocative southern-fried comedy about four liberal UC Berkeley students who stage a mock lynching during a Civil War reenactment--a fierce, funny, tragic work from a bold new writer"--
White Teeth
Zadie Smith · 480 pages
One of the most talked about fictional debuts of recent years, WHITE TEETH is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous
Thud!
Terry Pratchett · 398 pages
Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office. With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, ou
The Russian Debutante's Handbook
Gary Shteyngart · 464 pages
"Vladimir Girshkin - twenty-five-year-old Russian immigrant, "Little Failure" according to his high-achieving mother, unhappy lover to fat dungeon mistress Challah (his "little Challah bread"), and lowly clerk at the bureaucratic Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society - is about to have his first break. When the unlikely figure of a wealthy but psychotic old Russian war hero appears and introd
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.
The Secret Life of Saeed
Emile Habiby · 192 pages
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.
American Born Chinese
Gene Luen Yang · 240 pages
Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format.
Oreo
Fran Ross, Harryette Mullen · 240 pages
"Born to a Jewish father and black mother who divorce before she is two, Oreo grows up in Philadelphia with her maternal grandparents while her mother tours with a theatrical troupe. Soon after puberty, Oreo heads for New York with a pack on her back to search for her father, but in the big city she soon discovers that there are dozens of Sam Schwartzes in the phone book. Oreo's mission turns into
A Right to Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury
Aaron McGruder · 255 pages
Here’s the first big book of The Boondocks, more than four years and 800 strips of one of the most influential, controversial, and scathingly funny comics ever to run in a daily newspaper. “With bodacious wit, in just a few panels, each day Aaron serves up—and sends up—life in America through the eyes of two African-American kids who are full of attitude, intelligence, and rebellion. Each time
Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth · 288 pages
Though is caused outrage and controversy at the time of its publication Roth’s comic novel of sexual obsession and frustration is now widely regarded as one of the best novels of the twentieth century.
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
Mislaid
Nell Zink · 257 pages
Startlingly radical, dazzlingly witty, unlike anything that has come before - this is the most exciting debut novel published this year. 'Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know.' Jonathan Franzen Virginia, 1966.
The Mystic Masseur
V.S. Naipaul · 215 pages
"Traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. To understand a little better, one has to realize that in the 1940s masseurs were the island's medical practitioners of choice."--P. [4] of cover.
Erasure
Percival Everett · 278 pages
Thelonius "Monk" Ellison is an erudite, accomplished but seldom-read author who insists on writing obscure literary papers rather than the so-called "ghetto prose" that would make him a commercial success. He finally succumbs to temptation after seeing the Oberlin-educated author of We's Lives in da Ghetto during her appearance on a talk show, firing back with a parody called My Pafology, which he
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.