Books like

Books like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

12 books with a reading profile close to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, James Joyce, james joyce, J Joyce. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

  1. 1 The Portrait of a Lady

    The Portrait of a Lady

    by Henry James

    Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

    Isabel Archer, a spirited young American, travels to Victorian England to seek independence rather than a conventional marriage.

  2. 2 Letter to His Father

    Letter to His Father

    by Franz Kafka

    Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

    In this unsent document, Franz Kafka addresses his father, Hermann Kafka, to dissect their dysfunctional relationship and the psychological damage caused by his father’s overbearing personality.

  3. 3 Villette

    Villette

    by Charlotte Brontë

    Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

    Lucy Snowe, a plain, reserved young Englishwoman with no family, leaves for the town of Villette in the fictional country of Labassecour, a thinly disguised Belgium.

  4. 4 Ariel

    Ariel

    by Sylvia Plath

    Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

    Ariel contains the poems Sylvia Plath wrote during the final months of her life, focusing on domestic confinement, creative rebirth, and mental disintegration.

  5. 5 Tender is the Night

    Tender is the Night

    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

    Dick Diver is a promising American psychiatrist living on the French Riviera during the 1920s.

  6. 6 The Collected Poems

    The Collected Poems

    by Sylvia Plath

    Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

    This chronological assembly spans Plath’s creative output from 1956 until her death in 1963.

  7. 7 Crime and Punishment

    Crime and Punishment

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

    Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

    Rodion Raskolnikov, a destitute former student living in a cramped St.

  8. 8 Lolita

    Lolita

    by Vladimir Nabokov

    Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

    Humbert Humbert is an academic who feels an intense attraction to young girls he calls nymphets.

  9. 9 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

    by Edward Albee

    Also deep and inward-looking · psychology, literary

    Middle-aged history professor George and his wife Martha return home after a campus party and invite a younger couple, Nick and Honey, for late-night drinks.

  10. 10 Mrs. Dalloway

    Mrs. Dalloway

    by Virginia Woolf

    Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

    Clarissa Dalloway spends a June Wednesday in 1925 London purchasing flowers and preparing her home for an evening gala.

  11. 11 Long Day’s Journey into Night

    Long Day’s Journey into Night

    by Eugene O'Neill

    Also deep and inward-looking · psychology, literary

    One August day in 1912, the Tyrone family gathers at their summer home in Connecticut.

  12. 12 Kokoro

    Kokoro

    by Natsume Sōseki, Edwin McClellan

    Also deep and inward-looking · psychology, literary

    The narrative centers on a university student in Tokyo who befriends an older, cynical intellectual he calls Sensei.

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