Books like

Books like The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

12 books with a reading profile close to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

Lincoln in the Bardo

by George Saunders

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln visits a Georgetown cemetery to mourn his young son, Willie, who has just died of typhoid fever.
2

Weather

by Jenny Offill

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Lizzie Benson is a university librarian and former addict who begins answering mail for a climate change podcast hosted by her old mentor.
3

Outline

by Rachel Cusk

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, literary

Faye, a British novelist, travels to Athens during a summer heatwave to teach a week-long creative writing course.
4

Time Shelter

by Georgi Gospodinov

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Gospodinov's novel imagines a Swiss-run clinic that treats Alzheimer's patients by recreating the decade of their youth, with floors that look like the 1960s, 1970s and so on.
5

Invisible Cities

by Italo Calvino

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, literary

In a garden within the Mongol dynasty, the aging ruler Kublai Khan listens to Marco Polo describe the far-flung outposts of an expanding empire.
6

100 Selected Poems

by E.E. Cummings

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

This collection showcases Edward Estlin Cummings’s rejection of standard grammar and punctuation in favor of visual typography.
7

I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Forty women live in an underground cage, guarded by silent men who never speak or touch them.
8

Einstein’s Dreams

by Alan Lightman

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, literary

Set in Bern, Switzerland, in 1905, this novel presents a series of thirty fictional dreams experienced by a young Albert Einstein while he works as a patent clerk.
9

The Woman in the Dunes

by Kōbō Abe, Machi Abe

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

An entomologist named Niki is drawn into a strange village by a woman who lives in a pit.
10

The Wall

by Marlen Haushofer

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

A woman is staying at a hunting lodge in the Austrian Alps with relatives when she wakes to find that an invisible, impassable wall has cut off the valley, and everything beyond it appears dead.
11

Waiting for Godot

by Samuel Beckett

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, stand by a leafless tree on a barren road.
12

The White Book

by Han Kang

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

The White Book is a collection of sixty-five short prose pieces centered on the color white.

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