Books like

Books like Rubāʻīyāt

12 books with a reading profile close to Rubāʻīyāt by Omar Khayyam. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and open-ended; a moderate read.

1

The Stranger

by Albert Camus

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

In Algiers, a clerk named Meursault receives news of his mother’s death and attends her funeral with complete emotional detachment.
2

The Metamorphosis

by Franz Kafka

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman and his family’s sole financial provider, wakes up one morning to find he has become a giant, literal insect.
3

Songs of innocence and of experience

by William Blake

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

William Blake’s hand-colored collection contrasts two differing states of the human soul.
4

The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

Giovanni Drogo, a young officer, is posted to the Bastiani Fortress, an isolated outpost on the northern frontier overlooking a barren plain.
5

Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

After receiving a prophecy from three witches that he will become King of Scotland, a general named Macbeth murders King Duncan to seize the throne.
6

Waiting for the Barbarians

by J.M. Coetzee

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, classic literature

A magistrate runs a small frontier town in an unnamed empire.
7

Poems by John Keats

by John Keats

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

John Keats’s debut collection, published in March 1817 rather than 1800, organizes lyrical meditations on the restorative capacity of the natural world and the permanence of classical mythology.
8

Alcestis

by Euripides

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, classic literature

In this tragedy, King Admetus is granted a reprieve from his impending death on the condition that someone else dies in his place.
9

Death in Venice

by Thomas Mann

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

Gustav von Aschenbach, a disciplined German writer who has prioritized rigorous intellect over sensory pleasure, travels to Venice to escape a creative drought.
10

Medea

by Euripides

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

Euripides depicts the psychological collapse and subsequent vengeance of Medea, a Colchian princess abandoned by her husband, Jason.
11

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

A cynical protagonist, convinced that nothing in the universe possesses objective value, decides to commit suicide.
12

One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

by Luigi Pirandello

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, classic literature

Vitangelo Moscarda, a man of comfortable means who has inherited a bank from his father, is told by his wife that his nose is crooked.

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