Books like Foucault’s Pendulum
12 books with a reading profile close to Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Deep, open-ended and thought-provoking; a demanding read.
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1
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, dense
Labyrinths is a compilation of Jorge Luis Borges’s short fiction, essays, and parables, characterized by mathematical puzzles and philosophical paradoxes.
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2
The Glass Bead Game
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, dense
Set in the future province of Castalia, the narrative follows Joseph Knecht as he rises to the rank of Magister Ludi within an elitist intellectual order.
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3
Infinite Jest
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, dense
Set in a near-future North America where years are named after corporate sponsors, the narrative centers on the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House and the Enfield Tennis Academy.
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4
Immortality
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, dense
A woman in her sixties waves goodbye to a lifeguard at a pool, and the gesture is enough to give Kundera's narrator the idea for Agnès, a character he follows through the whole book.
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5
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, dense
Milan Kundera's novel is composed of seven parts which are linked by themes of memory, forgetting and the exercise of power.
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6
Austerlitz
by W.G. Sebald
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, dense
The narrator meets Jacques Austerlitz in the waiting room of the Antwerp railway station in the 1960s, and the two begin to talk about architecture.
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7
Invisible Cities
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary
In a garden within the Mongol dynasty, the aging ruler Kublai Khan listens to Marco Polo describe the far-flung outposts of an expanding empire.
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8
Ghostwritten
Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary
David Mitchell’s debut novel connects nine disparate characters across the globe through a series of interlocking narratives.
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9
Milkman
by Anna Burns
Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary
Middle sister lives in an unnamed city under the shadow of paramilitary violence and state surveillance, reminiscent of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
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10
Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
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.
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11
Água Viva
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, dense
Água Viva functions as a sustained internal monologue delivered by an anonymous female painter who abandons representational art to pursue the instantaneous "now." The text rejects traditional narrative progression, ins…
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12
The Book of Disquiet
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, dense
Published long after the author’s death, this fragmented prose collection serves as the autobiography of Bernardo Soares, one of Fernando Pessoa’s many heteronyms.
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