Books like

Books like The Old Man and the Sea

12 books with a reading profile close to The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

Our Town

by Thornton Wilder

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Set in the fictional village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, between 1901 and 1913, this three-act play strips away traditional theatrical scenery to focus on the daily rhythms of the Gibbs and Webb families.
2

The Razor’s Edge

by W. Somerset Maugham

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Larry Darrell returns to Chicago from the battlefields of World War I, but find himself unable to settle into a conventional social life or a marriage with his fiancée, Isabel Bradley.
3

The power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Set in 1930s Mexico during the Cristero War, the narrative follows a nameless whiskey priest fleeing a paramilitary police force.
4

The Last Day of a Condemned Man

by Victor Hugo

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Focused on the final six weeks of a prisoner awaiting execution in nineteenth-century France, Victor Hugo’s novel follows an unnamed protagonist from his trial at the Bicêtre Hospital to the guillotine at Place de Grève.
5

The Road Not Taken and Other Poems

by Robert Frost

Also inward-looking and contemplative · philosophy, literary

Robert Frost’s 1916 collection, originally titled Mountain Interval, centers on the rural landscapes and social dynamics of New England.
6

Death in Venice

by Thomas Mann

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Gustav von Aschenbach, a disciplined German writer who has prioritized rigorous intellect over sensory pleasure, travels to Venice to escape a creative drought.
7

Songs of innocence and of experience

by William Blake

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

William Blake’s hand-colored collection contrasts two differing states of the human soul.
8

Fathers and Sons

by Ivan Turgenev

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, literary

Arkady Kirsanov returns from university to his father's estate in 1859, bringing his friend Yevgeny Bazarov, a medical student and self-declared nihilist who rejects authority, art, and tradition.
9

The Stranger

by Albert Camus

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

In Algiers, a clerk named Meursault receives news of his mother’s death and attends her funeral with complete emotional detachment.
10

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

A cynical protagonist, convinced that nothing in the universe possesses objective value, decides to commit suicide.
11

Alcestis

by Euripides

Also deep and contemplative · 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

Eugene Onegin

by Alexander Pushkin

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, literary

Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse follows Eugene Onegin, a cynical aristocrat weary of Saint Petersburg’s high society.

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