Books like

Books like The Magus

12 books with a reading profile close to The Magus by John Fowles. Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

The Unconsoled

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

Ryder, a world-famous pianist, arrives in an unnamed European city to give a performance that the local citizens believe will solve their collective social crises.
2

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

by David Foster Wallace

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

David Foster Wallace's collection of stories is made up of a series of interviews with men whose answers are given but not the questions.
3

How to be Both

by Ali Smith

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

This novel connects two distinct eras through a dual-narrative structure that can be read in either order.
4

To Paradise

by Hanya Yanagihara

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, literary

This novel follows three distinct narratives set in a reimagined New York City across different centuries.
5

Number9Dream

by David Mitchell

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Nineteen-year-old Eiji Miyake travels from rural Yakushima to the neon-drenched cityscape of Tokyo to find the father he has never met.
6

Milkman

by Anna Burns

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Middle sister lives in an unnamed city under the shadow of paramilitary violence and state surveillance, reminiscent of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
7

Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

Also deep and inward-looking · psychology, literary

Bento Santiago, a retired man living in Rio de Janeiro, writes a memoir to explain why he earned the nickname Dom Casmurro.
8

Mrs. Dalloway

by Virginia Woolf

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

Clarissa Dalloway spends a June Wednesday in 1925 London purchasing flowers and preparing her home for an evening gala.
9

The Vegetarian

by Han Kang

Also deep and inward-looking · psychology, literary

Yeong-hye, a South Korean housewife, suddenly stops eating meat after a series of visceral, bloody dreams.
10

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

by Milan Kundera

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, literary

Milan Kundera's novel is composed of seven parts which are linked by themes of memory, forgetting and the exercise of power.
11

Immortality

by Milan Kundera

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, literary

A woman in her sixties waves goodbye to a lifeguard at a pool, and the gesture is enough to give Kundera's narrator the idea for Agnès, a character he follows through the whole book.
12

NW

by Zadie Smith

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, literary

NW focuses on four Londoners—Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan—who grew up in the Caldwell council estate in the NW6 postcode.

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