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🧲 Books like this

The Black Prince

Iris Murdoch · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Leviathan

Paul Auster · 265 pages

"Leviathan begins when a woman finds an address book and steals a new identity. Or it begins with a sudden, violent death. Or it begins as Peter Aaron sits down to tell the story of his best friend, Benjamin Sachs - to take us, through a life, to the road in rural Wisconsin where Sachs has accidentally blown himself up. Aaron's sole aim is to tell the truth and preserve it, before those who are in

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The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood · 638 pages

More than fifty years on, Iris Chase is remembering Laura's mysterious death. And so begins an extraordinary and compelling story of two sisters and their secrets. Set against a panoramic backdrop of twentieth-century history, The Blind Assassin is an epic tale of memory, intrigue and betrayal...

Writer ProtagonistFrame StoryUnreliable NarratorForbidden Love
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Pale Fire

Vladimir Nabokov · 301 pages

A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's fiction--by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.

Unreliable NarratorFrame StoryWriter ProtagonistDense Prose
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The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

Kristopher Jansma · 354 pages

"Can a leopard ever really change his spots? Can a person ever change? These are the timeless questions that Kristopher Jansma asks in this enchanting debut novel about three great friends--two men and one woman--their triumphs and failures in life and love and their globe-spanning adventures. From the jazz clubs of Manhattan to the villages of Sri Lanka, these three remarkably engaging characters

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Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Marlon James · 640 pages

Unreliable NarratorFrame StoryDense ProseFirst Person Narrator
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Atonement

Ian McEwan · 371 pages

On a hot summer day in 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the c

Unreliable NarratorWriter ProtagonistFrame StoryForbidden Love
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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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The Thirteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield · 424 pages

Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long.

Frame StoryWriter ProtagonistUnreliable NarratorFirst Person Narrator
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Famous Last Words

Timothy Findley · 396 pages

En 1945, dans un palace abandonné des Alpes autrichiennes, un écrivain américain traqué, zélateur du fascisme, couvre les murs et les plafonds de ses souvenirs : la Chine de 1924; la France de 1936; l'Espagne de 1938; les Bahamas de 1942. Une méditation sur l'homme et sur l'histoire, par un écrivain canadien anglais de calibre international.

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The Angel's Game

Carlos Ruiz Zafon · 537 pages

From master storyteller Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author of the international phenomenon The Shadow of the Wind, comes The Angel's Game--a dazzling new page-turner about the perilous nature of obsession, in literature and in love."The whole of Barcelona stretched out at my feet and I wanted to believe that, when I opened those windows, its streets would whisper stories to me, secrets I could capture on p

Writer ProtagonistUnreliable NarratorForbidden LoveLiterary 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 NarratorFrame StoryDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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Malone Dies

Samuel Beckett · 176 pages

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Soldiers of Salamis

Javier Cercas · 224 pages

"In the final moments of the Spanish Civil War, as the remnants of the Republican army retreat north into exile, fifty prominent Nationalist prisoners are taken out to be shot. Among them is Rafael Sanchez Mazas - writer, fascist and founder of the Spanish Falange." "As the machine guns begin to fire, Sanchez Mazas takes advantage of the commotion and escapes into the forest. When his hiding plac

Writer ProtagonistFrame StoryDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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House of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski · 736 pages

Unreliable NarratorFrame StoryDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie · 548 pages

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Drood

Dan Simmons · 963 pages

On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens--at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world--hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever. Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the wor

Unreliable NarratorWriter ProtagonistDense ProseFirst Person Narrator
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Frame StoryForbidden LoveLiterary FictionDense Prose
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The Fall

Albert Camus · 147 pages

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The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

Mario Vargas Llosa · 309 pages

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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 NarratorFrame StoryDense ProseLiterary Fiction
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Quicksand

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

Frame StoryUnreliable NarratorForbidden LoveLiterary Fiction
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Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë · 418 pages

Emily Bronte's dark romance, with an introduction from best-selling author Alice Hoffman Heathcliff comes to the brooding mansion of Wuthering Heighths as an orphan child. Cathy is the daughter of the wealthy family that takes him in. They are drawn together from the moment they meet, their love consuming, destructive, and full of desire. They cannot be together, and yet they cannot stay apart. Th

Frame StoryForbidden LoveUnreliable NarratorDense Prose
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Baudolino

Umberto Eco · 528 pages

Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino narrates the story of his life, from his adoption by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and his education in Paris to his arrival in Constantinople during the turmoil of the Fourth Crusade.

Unreliable NarratorFrame StoryLiterary FictionFirst Person Narrator
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The Master and Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov · 412 pages

The battle of competing translations, a new publishing phenomenon which began with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, now offers two rival American editions of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Mirra Ginsburg's (Grove Press) version is pointedly grotesque: she delights in the sharp, spinning, impressionistic phrase. Her Bulgakov reminds one of the virtuoso effects encountered in Za

Frame StoryWriter ProtagonistLiterary FictionDense Prose
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