Books like

Books like If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

12 books with a reading profile close to If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. Deep, open-ended and thought-provoking; a demanding read.

1

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel García Márquez

Also deep and open-ended · narrative, classic literature

The narrative follows seven generations of the Buendía family within the isolated village of Macondo, beginning with the patriarch José Arcadio Buendía.
2

Catch 22

by Joseph Heller

Also deep and open-ended · narrative, classic literature

Set during World War II, the narrative follows Captain John Yossarian, a B-25 bombardier stationed on the island of Pianosa.
3

Difficult Loves

by Italo Calvino

Also deep and open-ended · narrative, classic literature

This collection gathers fifteen short stories centered on the internal friction between private desire and social reality.
4

Naked Lunch

by William S. Burroughs, William Burroughs

Also deep and open-ended · classic literature, literary

William Lee, a drug addict and fugitive, flees a narcotics investigation in the United States to seek refuge in the Interzone, a hallucinatory territory located in North Africa.
5

Amerika

by Franz Kafka

Also deep and open-ended · classic literature, literary

Karl Rossmann is a teenager banished by his parents to America after a scandal with a maid.
6

Fugitive Pieces

by Anne Michaels

Also deep and open-ended · narrative, classic literature

Jakob Beer is seven years old when he hides behind a wall and watches Nazi soldiers abduct his family in occupied Poland.
7

Ficciones

by Jorge Luis Borges

Also deep and open-ended · classic literature, literary

Ficciones consists of seventeen short stories divided into two sections, The Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices.
8

The Penelopiad

by Margaret Atwood

Also thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

In this novella, Penelope speaks from the underworld to recount her life in Ithaca during the twenty-year absence of Odysseus.
9

Clevinger's trial (from 'Catch-22')

by Joseph Heller

Also deep and open-ended · classic literature, literary

Joseph Heller’s standalone play, Clevinger’s Trial, adapts the eighth chapter of his novel Catch-22 into a rhythmic, one-act script.
10

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Also deep and open-ended · classic literature, literary

The poem recounts a sailor’s harrowing sea voyage that spirals into disaster after he shoots an albatross without provocation.
11

The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon

Also deep and open-ended · classic literature, literary

Oedipa Maas is appointed executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul and her former lover.
12

The Winter's Tale

by William Shakespeare

Also deep and open-ended · narrative, classic literature

King Leontes of Sicily falls into a sudden, irrational jealousy, accusing his pregnant wife Hermione of adultery with his childhood friend, King Polixenes.

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