Books like Kafka on the Shore
12 books with a reading profile close to Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
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1
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
by Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
A lonely cartographer finds himself drawn to a mysterious walled city, a place that seems to exist in a liminal space between reality and dream.
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2
The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
by Neil Gaiman
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
The ninth volume follows Lyta Hall as she descends into madness after the disappearance of her son, Daniel.
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3
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, narrative
Toru Okada is an unemployed man in suburban Tokyo whose mundane life fractures after his cat vanishes and his wife, Kumiko, leaves him without explanation.
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4
The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake
by Neil Gaiman
Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary
Following the death of Morpheus, the personification of Dream, his successor takes his place among the Endless.
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5
Flights
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, narrative
Olga Tokarczuk’s work is a constellation of short stories, historical anecdotes, and anatomical observations centered on the physical reality of the human body in motion.
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6
The Memory Police
by Yōko Ogawa
Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, narrative
On an unnamed island, objects disappear from public life and collective memory.
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7
The Buried Giant
Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, narrative
In post-Arthurian Britain, an elderly couple named Axl and Beatrice depart their village to search for a son they barely remember.
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8
Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, narrative
After a cargo ship sinks in the Pacific Ocean, sixteen-year-old Pi Patel finds himself stranded on a lifeboat with an adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
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9
Tehanu (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 4)
Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, narrative
Tenar, once a high priestess and now a widow, lives a quiet life farming on the island of Gont until she adopts Therru, a girl severely burned and scarred by her own family.
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10
Orbital
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, narrative
Set over twenty-four hours aboard the International Space Station, the narrative follows six astronauts—Roman, Pietro, Shaun, Nell, Chie, and Anton—as they complete sixteen orbits around Earth.
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11
The Master and Margarita
Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary
The devil, naming himself Professor Woland, arrives in 1930s Moscow accompanied by a talking black cat and a violent retinue.
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12
The White Book
by Han Kang
Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, narrative
The White Book is a collection of sixty-five short prose pieces centered on the color white.
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