Books like

Books like A Clockwork Orange

12 books with a reading profile close to A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Deep, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

The Tin Drum

by Günter Grass

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Oskar Matzerath, an inmate in a mental institution, narrates his life through his toy tin drum.
2

Midnight’s Children

by Salman Rushdie

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Saleem Sinai is born at the exact stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, linking his life to the birth of independent India.
3

Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

Also deep and open-ended · dense, science fiction

Cloud Atlas follows six interlocking narratives that span from the mid-nineteenth-century Pacific Ocean to a post-apocalyptic Hawaiian future.
4

Pedro Páramo

by Juan Rulfo

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Juan Preciado travels to Comala to fulfill a deathbed promise to his mother: find his father, the ruthless cacique Pedro Páramo.
5

The Satanic Verses

by Salman Rushdie

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Two Indian expatriates, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, survive a mid-air plane explosion over the English Channel and undergo startling physical transformations.
6

Sprawl (Necromancer) Series

by William Gibson

Also deep · dense, science fiction

The Sprawl series follows Henry Dorsett Case, a data thief hired by a mysterious entity to bypass the ice securing a massive artificial intelligence.
7

Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

by Cormac McCarthy

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

The story follows a nameless teenager known only as the kid, a runaway from Tennessee who joins the Glanton gang along the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the late 1840s.
8

The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Oedipa Maas is appointed executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul and her former lover.
9

Journey to the End of the Night

by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Ferdinand Bardamu, a cynical and nihilistic protagonist, begins his odyssey in the trenches of World War I, where he observes the senseless brutality of mechanized slaughter.
10

Number9Dream

by David Mitchell

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Nineteen-year-old Eiji Miyake travels from rural Yakushima to the neon-drenched cityscape of Tokyo to find the father he has never met.
11

Slaughterhouse-Five

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Also deep and open-ended · science fiction, literary

Billy Pilgrim is an American chaplain’s assistant who becomes "unstuck in time" after his capture by German soldiers during World War II.
12

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

The poem recounts a sailor’s harrowing sea voyage that spirals into disaster after he shoots an albatross without provocation.

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