Books like

Books like Assembly

12 books with a reading profile close to Assembly by Natasha Brown. Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

Lost Children Archive

by Valeria Luiselli

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, experimental

A family of four travels by car from New York City to the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona.
2

Interior Chinatown

by Charles Yu

Also deep and open-ended · literary, experimental

Interior Chinatown follows Willis Wu, a background actor trapped in the repetitive hierarchy of a procedural television show titled Black and White.
3

Pastoralia

by George Saunders

Also deep and thought-provoking · literary, experimental

George Saunders' collection mixes satire, dark comedy and surreal settings, with working-class characters who struggle against a strange economy.
4

Bliss Montage

by Ling Ma

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · literary, experimental

Ling Ma’s collection contains eight stories where the surreal intersects with the mundane.
5

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

by Maxine Hong Kingston

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, experimental

Maxine Hong Kingston weaves together her upbringing in mid-century California with the ancestral folklore of her immigrant parents.
6

Howl and Other Poems

by Allen Ginsberg

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, experimental

Published in 1956, this collection centers on the title poem, a frantic catalog of mid-century American struggle.
7

Ojos de perro azul

by Gabriel García Márquez

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, experimental

This collection of short stories documents the early development of Gabriel García Márquez’s narrative style before his shift into Macondo.
8

Orlando

by Virginia Woolf

Also deep and open-ended · literary, experimental

The narrative follows Orlando, a young Elizabethan nobleman who begins as a favorite of the court and lives for over three centuries without aging significantly.
9

Surfacing

by Margaret Atwood

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, experimental

An unnamed female protagonist returns to her childhood home on a desolate island in northern Quebec to investigate her father's unexplained disappearance.
10

Woyzeck

by Georg Büchner

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, experimental

Franz Woyzeck is a low-ranking soldier stationed in a provincial German town, struggling to provide for his common-law wife, Marie, and their infant son.
11

Trust Exercise

by Susan Choi

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, experimental

Set in a highly competitive arts high school during the 1980s, the narrative begins with Sarah and David, two drama students entangled in a pressurized romance under the watchful eye of their charismatic teacher, Mr.
12

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

by Mohsin Hamid

Also deep and open-ended · literary, experimental

In a single evening at a Lahore cafe, Changez narrates his life story to an unidentified American visitor.

Get picks matched to your own reading on papr.

Get papr

Your library, beautifully understood.