Books like

Books like The power and the Glory

12 books with a reading profile close to The power and the Glory by Graham Greene. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

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.
2

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.
3

Poems by John Keats

by John Keats

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

John Keats’s debut collection, published in March 1817 rather than 1800, organizes lyrical meditations on the restorative capacity of the natural world and the permanence of classical mythology.
4

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.
5

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.
6

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.
7

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.
8

The Old Man and the Sea

by Ernest Hemingway

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Set in a small Cuban fishing village in 1952, the story follows Santiago, an aging fisherman who has gone eighty-four days without a catch.
9

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.
10

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.
11

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.
12

Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

After receiving a prophecy from three witches that he will become King of Scotland, a general named Macbeth murders King Duncan to seize the throne.

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