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Vikas Swarup · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

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.

IndiaRags to RichesUnderdogWorking-Class Protagonist
❤️

The Running Man

Stephen King · 256 pages

The runaway bestseller about the ultimate reality showThe year is 2025. The Running Man is America's favorite television game show. Ben Richards is the program's latest contestant-and the Hunters' latest target in a rigged game of death…

Game ShowUnderdogWorking-Class ProtagonistEconomic Inequality
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Survivor

Chuck Palahniuk · 289 pages

Tender Branson, the last surviving member of the Creedish death cult, has commandeered a Boeing 747, emptied of passengers, in order to tell his story to the plane’s black box before it crashes. Brought up by the repressive cult and, like all Creedish younger sons, hired out as a domestic servant, Tender finds himself suddenly famous when his fellow cult members all commit suicide. As media messia

Frame StoryNonlinear NarrativeWorking-Class ProtagonistRags to Riches
❤️

The Hundred-Foot Journey

Richard C. Morais

Rags to RichesIndiaUnderdogContemporary Fiction
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Game ShowUnderdogEconomic InequalityClassism
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A Woman of Substance

Barbara Taylor Bradford · 843 pages

Emma Harte Lowther Ainsley is seventy-eight years old and one of the richest most powerful women in the world. Self-reliant and ruthless, she uses money as a weapon and adversity as a tool. In her poverty-stricken youth, Emma exhibited an uncommon amount of initiative and intelligence even as a maidservant on a Yorkshire estate. Pregnant and unwed at fifteen, she fled her shameful situation to s

Rags to RichesUnderdogWorking-Class ProtagonistClassism
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Starter for Ten

David Nicholls · 480 pages

It's 1985 and Brian has just started his first term at university. But he is harbouring a dark secret - a long-held, burning ambition to appear on "University Challenge". At last the dream is about to become reality, but Brian has a whole lot of living to do before the match starts.

Game ShowWorking-Class ProtagonistClassismContemporary Fiction
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Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie · 548 pages

IndiaFrame StoryNonlinear NarrativeFirst Person Narrator
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The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck · 316 pages

This tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought

Rags to RichesUnderdogWorking-Class ProtagonistEconomic Inequality
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Half Broke Horses

Jeannette Walls · 313 pages

It is 1970 in a small town in California. "Bean" Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, takes off to find herself, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their widowed Uncle Tinsley lives in the decay

UnderdogRags to RichesWorking-Class ProtagonistEconomic Inequality
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The Tea Rose

Jennifer Donnelly · 762 pages

East London, 1888 - a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores, and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night, where bright hopes meet the darkest truths. Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a cost

Rags to RichesUnderdogWorking-Class ProtagonistClass Struggle
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The Sleeping Dictionary

Sujata Massey · 496 pages

Kamala, a young peasant woman from West Bengal, is drawn into a forbidden romance in 1930s Calcutta and is caught between the country's independence movement and the British colonial society in which she lives.

IndiaRags to RichesWorking-Class Protagonist
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Cathedral of the Sea

Ildefonso Falcones · 634 pages

An unforgettable fresco of a golden age in fourteenth-century Barcelona, Cathedral of the Sea is a thrilling historical novel of friendship and revenge, plague and hope, love and war.   Arnau Estanyol arrives in Barcelona to find a city dominated by the construction of the city’s great pride—the cathedral of Santa Maria del Mar—and by its shame, the deadly Inquisition. As a young man, Arnau joins

Rags to RichesUnderdogWorking-Class ProtagonistClassism
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The Jewel in the Crown

Paul Scott · 467 pages

The first instalment of Scott's Raj Quartet, about life in colonial India. A young Englishwoman, new to India and untainted by the institutionalized racism of the ruling British colonials, begins an affair with a British public school educated young Indian. When the woman is raped by members of a rioting mob her lover is among those accused. The young woman refuses to testify against him or implic

IndiaFrame StoryNonlinear Narrative
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The Name of the Wind

Patrick Rothfuss · 667 pages

My name is Kvothe, pronounced nearly the same as "quothe." Names are important as they tell you a great deal about a person. I've had more names than anyone has a right to. The Adem call me Maedre. Which, depending on how it's spoken, can mean The Flame, The Thunder, or The Broken Tree. "The Flame" is obvious if you've ever seen me. I have red hair, bright. If I had been born a couple of hundr

Rags to RichesUnderdogFrame StoryClass Struggle
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Roald Dahl · 161 pages

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last!But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-t

Rags to RichesUnderdogWorking-Class ProtagonistEconomic Inequality
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#GIRLBOSS

Sophia Amoruso · 248 pages

Rags to RichesUnderdogWorking-Class ProtagonistFirst Person Narrator
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The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

Jonas Jonasson · 400 pages

In a tiny shack in the largest township in South Africa, Nombeko Mayeki is born. Put to work at five years old and orphaned at ten, she quickly learns that the world expects nothing more from her than to die young, be it from drugs, alcohol, or just plain despair. But Nombeko has grander plans. She learns to read and write, and at just fifteen, using her cunning and fearlessness, she makes it out

Rags to RichesUnderdogWorking-Class ProtagonistContemporary Fiction
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Dungeon Crawler Carl

Matt Dinniman

A Coast Guard vet named Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, are trapped in a fantasy dungeon. Read by Jeff Hays. 13 hours, 31 minutes unabridged.

Game ShowUnderdogFirst Person Narrator
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The Space Between Us

Thrity Umrigar · 328 pages

Each morning, Bhima, a domestic servant in contemporary Bombay, leaves her own small shanty in the slums to tend to another woman's house. In Sera Dubash's home, Bhima scrubs the floors of a house in which she remains an outsider. She cleans furniture she is not permitted to sit on. She washes glasses from which she is not allowed to drink. Yet despite being separated from each other by blood and

IndiaWorking-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityClassism
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The Running Man

Richard Bachman · 352 pages

Game ShowWorking-Class ProtagonistEconomic InequalityClass Struggle
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The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Daniel James Brown · 416 pages

Daniel James Brown’s robust book tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing f

Rags to RichesWorking-Class ProtagonistUnderdogClass Struggle
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Wings of Fire: An Autobiography

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam · 180 pages

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, the son of a little-educated boat-owner in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, had an unparalleled career as a defence scientist, culminating in the highest civilian award of India, the Bharat Ratna. As chief of the country’s defence research and development programme, Kalam demonstrated the great potential for dynamism and innovation that existed in seemingly moribund res

IndiaUnderdogWorking-Class Protagonist
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The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Mitch Albom · 196 pages

The Five People You Meet In Heaven is a 2003 novel by Mitch Albom. It follows the life and death of a ride mechanic named Eddie who is killed in an amusement park accident and sent to heaven, where he encounters five people who had a significant impact on him while he was alive. It was published by Hyperion and remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for 95 weeks.

Frame StoryNonlinear NarrativeWorking-Class ProtagonistContemporary Fiction

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