Books like

Books like Orlando

12 books with a reading profile close to Orlando by Virginia Woolf. Deep, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

The poem recounts a sailor’s harrowing sea voyage that spirals into disaster after he shoots an albatross without provocation.
2

Howl and Other Poems

by Allen Ginsberg

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

Published in 1956, this collection centers on the title poem, a frantic catalog of mid-century American struggle.
3

Woyzeck

by Georg Büchner

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

Franz Woyzeck is a low-ranking soldier stationed in a provincial German town, struggling to provide for his common-law wife, Marie, and their infant son.
4

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

by Joseph Heller

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

Joseph Heller’s standalone play, Clevinger’s Trial, adapts the eighth chapter of his novel Catch-22 into a rhythmic, one-act script.
5

Ojos de perro azul

by Gabriel García Márquez

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

This collection of short stories documents the early development of Gabriel García Márquez’s narrative style before his shift into Macondo.
6

Amerika

by Franz Kafka

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

Karl Rossmann is a teenager banished by his parents to America after a scandal with a maid.
7

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

by J.D. Salinger

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

J.D.
8

The Hour of the Star

by Clarice Lispector

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

In Rio de Janeiro, a self-absorbed narrator named Rodrigo S.M.
9

Naked Lunch

by William S. Burroughs, William Burroughs

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

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.
10

Heart of a Dog

by Mikhail Bulgakov

Also deep and thought-provoking · literary, classic literature

In 1920s Moscow, the surgeon Professor Preobrazhensky performs a radical medical experiment by transplanting a human pituitary gland and testicles into a stray dog named Sharik.
11

Tropic of Cancer

by Henry Miller

Also deep and thought-provoking · literary, classic literature

Henry Miller's first published novel is a loose, first-person account of an American writer living in Paris in the early 1930s with little money and a great appetite for food, sex, talk, and ideas.
12

Catch-22. A Dramatization

by Joseph Heller

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

In this 1971 dramatic adaptation, Joseph Heller reconfigures his World War II novel into a stage play centered on Captain Yossarian and his desperate attempts to be grounded from combat duty.

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