Books like

Books like Persepolis, Volume 1

12 books with a reading profile close to Persepolis, Volume 1 by Marjane Satrapi. Inward-looking and contemplative; an easy read.

1

The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

by Marina Keegan

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

The collection compiles fiction and non-fiction written by Marina Keegan before her death just days after graduating from Yale.
2

Brown Girl Dreaming

by Jacqueline Woodson

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir, written in verse, chronicles her childhood across the 1960s and 1970s.
3

Solutions and Other Problems

by Allie Brosh

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Allie Brosh uses crude digital illustrations and humorous vignettes to document her life after a long public absence.
4

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Fourteen-year-old Arnold Spirit Jr., a budding cartoonist born with physical vulnerabilities, lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation where poverty and alcoholism are pervasive.
5

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

by Maggie O'Farrell

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

This memoir documents seventeen instances where Maggie O’Farrell narrowly escaped death.
6

Beautiful Country

by Qian Julie Wang

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Qian Julie Wang was seven when she and her parents left China for New York in 1994, where her mother and father, a former professor and a professional, became undocumented workers.
7

Was man von hier aus sehen kann

by Mariana Leky

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, accessible

Luise, a ten-year-old girl in a small village in the German Westerwald, learns that whenever her grandmother Selma dreams of an okapi, someone in the village will die within twenty-four hours.
8

Black Cake

by Charmaine Wilkerson

Also inward-looking · narrative, accessible

After the death of Eleanor Bennett, her estranged children, Byron and Benny, reunite in California to hear her final recorded message.
9

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

by Alexandra Fuller

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

Alexandra Fuller outlines her upbringing in 1970s and 80s Rhodesia, Malawi, and Zambia during a period of violent decolonization.
10

When All Is Said

by Anne Griffin

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

Maurice Hannigan, an elderly Irish farmer, sits in a pub in a small town one evening and orders five drinks, one for each person who has been important in his life.
11

I Am the Messenger

by Markus Zusak

Also inward-looking · narrative, accessible

Ed Kennedy is an underage cab driver in a dead-end Australian suburb with no prospects beyond playing cards with his eccentric friends.
12

Travels with Charley: In Search of America

by John Steinbeck

memoir, narrative

In 1960, John Steinbeck drove a custom-built camper truck named Rocinante across nearly forty states to reconnect with the country he felt he no longer understood.

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