Books like

Books like Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira

12 books with a reading profile close to Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira by José Saramago. Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

Waiting for the Barbarians

by J.M. Coetzee

Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, classic literature

A magistrate runs a small frontier town in an unnamed empire.
2

Medea

by Euripides

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

Euripides depicts the psychological collapse and subsequent vengeance of Medea, a Colchian princess abandoned by her husband, Jason.
3

The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

Giovanni Drogo, a young officer, is posted to the Bastiani Fortress, an isolated outpost on the northern frontier overlooking a barren plain.
4

No Exit

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, classic literature

Set in a single room furnished with Second Empire sofas, the play follows three deceased individuals—Garcin, Inès, and Estelle—as they realize they are their own torturers.
5

The Wall

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, classic literature

Sartre's collection takes its name from the title story, set during the Spanish Civil War.
6

In the Penal Colony

by Franz Kafka

Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, classic literature

In Franz Kafka's "In the Penal Colony," an explorer witnesses a brutal execution machine in a remote penal colony.
7

Bartleby the Scrivener

by Herman Melville

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

Set in a mid-nineteenth-century Wall Street law office, the story follows an elderly lawyer who hires a quiet copyist named Bartleby to manage an increasing workload.
8

Alcestis

by Euripides

Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, classic literature

In this tragedy, King Admetus is granted a reprieve from his impending death on the condition that someone else dies in his place.
9

Songs of innocence and of experience

by William Blake

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

William Blake’s hand-colored collection contrasts two differing states of the human soul.
10

Measure for Measure

by William Shakespeare

Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, classic literature

Duke Vincentio departs Vienna under a pretext of travel, leaving the puritanical Angelo to enforce long-ignored moral laws.
11

Death in Venice

by Thomas Mann

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

Gustav von Aschenbach, a disciplined German writer who has prioritized rigorous intellect over sensory pleasure, travels to Venice to escape a creative drought.
12

Eugene Onegin

by Alexander Pushkin

Also deep and thought-provoking · philosophy, classic literature

Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse follows Eugene Onegin, a cynical aristocrat weary of Saint Petersburg’s high society.

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