Books like

Books like The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

12 books with a reading profile close to The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton. Deep, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

  1. 1 In the Penal Colony

    In the Penal Colony

    by Franz Kafka

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

    In Franz Kafka's "In the Penal Colony," an explorer witnesses a brutal execution machine in a remote penal colony.

  2. 2 Waiting for the Barbarians

    Waiting for the Barbarians

    by J.M. Coetzee

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

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

  3. 3 Measure for Measure

    Measure for Measure

    by William Shakespeare

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

    Duke Vincentio departs Vienna under a pretext of travel, leaving the puritanical Angelo to enforce long-ignored moral laws.

  4. 4 Medea

    Medea

    by Euripides

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

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

  5. 5 No Exit

    No Exit

    by Jean-Paul Sartre

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

    Set in a single room furnished with Second Empire sofas, the play follows three deceased individuals—Garcin, Inès, and Estelle—as they realize they are their own torturers.

  6. 6 Bartleby the Scrivener

    Bartleby the Scrivener

    by Herman Melville

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

    Set in a mid-nineteenth-century Wall Street law office, the story follows an elderly lawyer who hires a quiet copyist named Bartleby to manage an increasing workload.

  7. 7 The Wall

    The Wall

    by Jean-Paul Sartre

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

    Sartre's collection takes its name from the title story, set during the Spanish Civil War.

  8. 8 Island

    Island

    by Aldous Huxley

    Also deep and thought-provoking · philosophy, literary

    The story follows Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who shipwrecks on the forbidden Pacific island of Pala.

  9. 9 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

    Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

    by Tom Stoppard

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

    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.

  10. 10 The Tartar Steppe

    The Tartar Steppe

    by Dino Buzzati

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

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

  11. 11 Alcestis

    Alcestis

    by Euripides

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

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

  12. 12 Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas

    Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas

    by Machado de Assis

    Also deep and open-ended · philosophy, literary

    Brás Cubas begins his narrative after his death, writing as a deceased man who recounts his life from the grave.

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