Books like

Books like Martin Eden

12 books with a reading profile close to Martin Eden by Jack London. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

Out Stealing Horses

by Per Petterson

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man, has moved to a remote cabin in eastern Norway to live alone with his dog.
2

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Janie Crawford returns to Eatonville, Florida, and recounts her life to her friend Pheoby Watson.
3

Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor navigates thirteen months of adolescence in a claustrophobic Worcestershire village during 1982.
4

The Inheritance of Loss

by Kiran Desai

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Set in a crumbling house in the Himalayas against the 1980s Gorkhaland insurgency, the narrative follows Biju and Sai.
5

Winesburg, Ohio

by Sherwood Anderson

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Set in a small Midwestern town at the turn of the century, this collection of interconnected stories centers on George Willard, a young reporter for the local newspaper.
6

A Prayer for Owen Meany

by John Irving

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

John Wheelwright narrates the life of his best friend, Owen Meany, a boy with a high-pitched voice who accidentally kills John’s mother with a foul ball during a Little League game in 1953.
7

Tokyo Ueno Station

by Yū Miri

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Kazu is a ghost who haunts the grounds of Tokyo’s Ueno Park, mirroring the era he spent living there as a homeless laborer.
8

Dear Life

by Alice Munro

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Dear Life is Alice Munro's last collection, with ten stories of rural and small-town Canada.
9

Bastard Out of Carolina

by Dorothy Allison

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Ruth Anne "Bone" Boatwright grows up in Greenville, South Carolina, within a family cycle of poverty, violence, and heavy drinking.
10

A Month in the Country

by J.L. Carr

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Tom Birkin arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby in 1920, physically scarred and suffering from a nervous facial twitch following his service in the Great War.
11

Still Life

by Sarah Winman

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

In 1944, British soldier Ulysses Temper meets art historian Evelyn Skinner in a ruined Tuscan cellar.
12

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

by Thomas Hardy, Margaret R. Higonnet

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, literary

Tess Durbeyfield, a young woman living in the rural English countryside, discovers her family descends from the aristocratic d’Urberville line.

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