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The Sea, the Sea

Iris Murdoch · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Piranesi

Susanna Clarke · 272 pages

**From the *New York Times* bestselling author of *Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell*, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.** Piranesi's house is no ordinary building; its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is im

Unreliable NarratorDiary FormatOcean and ShipsCharacter-Driven
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La tregua

Mario Benedetti · 184 pages

'Perhaps that moment had been exceptional, but still, I felt alive. That pressure on my chest means being alive.' Forty-nine, with a kind face, no serious ailments (apart from varicose veins on his ankles), a good salary and three moody children, widowed accountant Martin Santome is about to retire. He assumes he'll take up gardening, or the guitar, or whatever retired people do. What he least exp

Midlife CrisisDiary FormatCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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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.

Unreliable NarratorCharacter-DrivenDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes · 152 pages

By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse. This intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a

Unreliable NarratorMidlife CrisisCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Unreliable NarratorCharacter-DrivenDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Lay of the Land

Richard Ford · 496 pages

Midlife CrisisCharacter-DrivenDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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The Fall

Albert Camus · 147 pages

Unreliable NarratorMidlife CrisisDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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Jakob von Gunten

Robert Walser · 154 pages

Diary FormatUnreliable NarratorCharacter-DrivenLiterary 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

Unreliable NarratorDense ProseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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The Untouchable

John Banville · 410 pages

(From the Hardcover edition) Twenty years after his "retirement," ex-spy Victor Maskell attempts to come to terms with what has happened to his life by embarking on his memoirs. This is the plot which fuels Banville's stunning new novel--a story that goes beyond the mere facts of espionage to penetrate the intricate heart of the spy.

Unreliable NarratorDense ProseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Nausea

Jean-Paul Sartre · 238 pages

Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature, Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist, holds a position of singular eminence in the world of letters. Among readers and critics familiar with the whole of Sartre's work, it is generally recognized that his earliest novel, La Nausée (first published in 1938), is his finest and most significant. It is unquestionably a key

Diary FormatDense ProseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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The Epicure's Lament

Kate Christensen · 351 pages

For ten years, Hugo Whittier, upper-class scion, former gigolo, failed belle-lettrist has been living a hermit's existence at Waverly, his family's crumbling mansion overlooking the Hudson. He passes the time reading Montaigne and M.F.K. Fisher, cooking himself delicious meals, smoking an endless number of cigarettes, and nursing a grudge against the world. But his older brother, Dennis, has ret

Diary FormatCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionDense Prose
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Unreliable NarratorOcean and ShipsDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe · 274 pages

'Robinson Crusoe has a universal appeal, a story that goes right to the core of existence' Simon ArmitageDaniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, regarded by many to be first novel in English, is also the original tale of a castaway struggling to survive on a remote desert island. The sole survivor of a shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe is washed up on a desert island. In his journal he chronicles his daily battl

Diary FormatOcean and ShipsDense ProseFirst Person Narrator
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Middle Passage

Charles R. Johnson · 209 pages

Diary FormatDense ProseLiterary FictionOcean and Ships
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The Secret History

Donna Tartt · 557 pages

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.

Unreliable NarratorDense ProseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

Contains: - Смех в темноте - [Lolita](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL627084W)

Unreliable NarratorDense ProseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Herzog

Saul Bellow · 352 pages

In one of his finest achievements, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow presents a multifaceted portrait of a modern-day hero, a man struggling with the complexity of existence and longing for redemption. Introduction by Philip Roth

Midlife CrisisDense ProseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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March

Geraldine Brooks · 304 pages

Diary FormatCharacter-DrivenDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels

John Updike · 1,516 pages

Midlife CrisisDense ProseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Wittgenstein's Mistress

David Markson · 240 pages

Unreliable NarratorCharacter-DrivenLiterary FictionDense Prose
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The Egyptologist

Arthur Phillips · 404 pages

Unreliable NarratorDiary FormatDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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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.

Character-DrivenDense ProseLiterary FictionUnreliable Narrator
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The Fermata

Nicholson Baker · 320 pages

Nicholson Baker's new novel is the story of Arno Strine, a temporary typist, who has perfected the knack of stopping time in its tracks and taking women's clothes off. He is hard at work on his autobiography, The Fermata, which proves in the telling to be a very provocative and altogether morally confused piece of work.

Unreliable NarratorDense ProseCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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