Books like

Books like Inferno

12 books with a reading profile close to Inferno by Dante Alighieri. Deep, contemplative and open-ended; a demanding read.

1

The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

by Dante Alighieri

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

Dante Alighieri narrates his own passage through the three realms of the afterlife, beginning in a dark forest where the Roman poet Virgil meets him.
2

Moby-Dick

by Herman Melville

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

Ishmael, a schoolmaster seeking relief from a melancholy spirit, joins the crew of the Pequod, a whaling vessel departing from Nantucket.
3

Works [37 plays, 6 poems, sonnets]

by William Shakespeare

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

This 1730 collection organizes the complete dramatic and poetic output of William Shakespeare, encompassing comedies, histories, and tragedies alongside his lyrical sequences.
4

The Magic Mountain

by Thomas Mann

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

Hans Castorp, a young engineer, visits his cousin at a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, intending to stay for three weeks.
5

Faust, First Part

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

Heinrich Faust, a disenchanted scholar, abandons traditional medicine, theology, and philosophy after realizing that intellectual mastery has failed to reveal the secrets of the universe.
6

The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

by Sophocles

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

These three plays by Sophocles follow Thebes' royal family through its curse.
7

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

by W.B. Yeats

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

This volume tracks the evolution of William Butler Yeats’s poetic output across four decades, charting a progression from early Victorian romanticism to a starker, modernist aesthetic.
8

Paradise Lost

by John Milton

Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, dense

John Milton composed this epic poem in blank verse to justify the ways of God to men.
9

King Lear

by William Shakespeare

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

In 1608, William Shakespeare’s tragedy follows an aging British monarch who abdicates his throne and divides his territory based on his daughters’ public professions of love.
10

Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

Alonso Quijano, an elderly man from La Mancha, loses his grip on reality after consuming a constant diet of chivalric tales.
11

The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Volume 2: Purgatorio

by Dante Alighieri

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

Following their departure from the pit of Hell, Dante and his guide Virgil ascend the island-mountain of Purgatory.
12

Collected Fictions

by Jorge Luis Borges

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, dense

This volume brings together Borges's short fiction in English, including A Universal History of Infamy, Ficciones, The Aleph, Doctor Brodie's Report and The Book of Sand.

Get picks matched to your own reading on papr.

Get papr

Your library, beautifully understood.