Books like

Books like The Dead

12 books with a reading profile close to The Dead by James Joyce. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

by Anton Chekhov

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, classic literature

This collection gathers short fiction depicting the mundane lives of late nineteenth-century Russian peasants, clerks, and aristocrats.
2

El llano en llamas

by Juan Rulfo

Also deep and contemplative · literary, classic literature

Juan Rulfo's collection has seventeen short stories set in the arid countryside of Jalisco in Mexico, after the Revolution and the Cristero War.
3

The complete poetical works

by Robert Burns

Also deep and contemplative · literary, classic literature

Robert Burns’s 1786 collection, originally titled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, documents the intersection of rural labor and linguistic identity.
4

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

by Ambrose Bierce

Also inward-looking and open-ended · literary, classic literature

Farquhar, a Southern planter, is being hanged for attempting to sabotage an Owl Creek bridge during the Civil War.
5

A Rose for Emily and Other Stories

by William Faulkner

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

Faulkner's collection centers on the title story, in which the townspeople of Jefferson, Mississippi, attend the funeral of Miss Emily Grierson, a reclusive woman from an old family.
6

The Moon and Sixpence

by W. Somerset Maugham

Also deep and thought-provoking · literary, classic literature

Charles Strickland is an ordinary London stockbroker with a wife and two children until he abandons them without explanation and moves to Paris to paint.
7

Portnoy’s Complaint

by Philip Roth

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, classic literature

Alexander Portnoy lies on a psychoanalyst’s couch and delivers a frantic, obscene monologue regarding his sexual frustrations and childhood hangfires.
8

The Complete Fairy Tales

by Oscar Wilde

Also inward-looking and contemplative · literary, classic literature

This collection brings together stories including The Happy Prince, The Selfish Giant, and The Nightingale and the Rose.
9

The Story of an Hour

by Kate Chopin

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · literary, classic literature

Set in 1894, the narrative follows Louise Mallard as she receives news of her husband Brently’s death in a railroad disaster.
10

Tartuffe

by Molière

Also deep and thought-provoking · literary, classic literature

In seventeenth-century Paris, a wealthy patriarch named Orgon falls under the spell of Tartuffe, a man posing as a pious ascetic.
11

Washington Square

by Henry James

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, classic literature

In the affluent backdrop of mid-nineteenth-century New York, Catherine Sloper lives under the scrutiny of her father, Austin, a prominent physician who views his daughter as dull and unremarkable.
12

The Poetry of Robert Frost

by Robert Frost

Also deep and inward-looking · literary, classic literature

This collection assembles the complete poetic output of Robert Frost, organizing over three hundred poems chronologically from his early twentieth-century debut through his final years.

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