Books like

Books like The Hunting of the Snark

12 books with a reading profile close to The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll. Deep and open-ended; a moderate read.

1

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.
2

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.
3

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.
4

Heart of a Dog

by Mikhail Bulgakov

Also deep · 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.
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

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.
7

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.
8

Orlando

by Virginia Woolf

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

The narrative follows Orlando, a young Elizabethan nobleman who begins as a favorite of the court and lives for over three centuries without aging significantly.
9

Tropic of Cancer

by Henry Miller

Also deep · 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.
10

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.
11

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.
12

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

by Tom Stoppard

Also deep and open-ended · literary, classic literature

Tom Stoppard’s play centers on two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet who find themselves wandering through the wings of a tragedy they do not understand.

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