Books like

Books like The Satanic Verses

12 books with a reading profile close to The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Deep, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a demanding read.

1

Midnight’s Children

by Salman Rushdie

Also deep and contemplative · dense, classic literature

Saleem Sinai is born at the exact stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, linking his life to the birth of independent India.
2

The Tin Drum

by Günter Grass

Also deep and open-ended · dense, classic literature

Oskar Matzerath, an inmate in a mental institution, narrates his life through his toy tin drum.
3

Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

by Cormac McCarthy

Also deep and open-ended · dense, classic literature

The story follows a nameless teenager known only as the kid, a runaway from Tennessee who joins the Glanton gang along the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the late 1840s.
4

The Waste Land and Other Poems

by T.S. Eliot

Also deep and open-ended · dense, classic literature

Published in the wake of the First World War, this collection centers on the psychological and cultural fragmentation of Western society.
5

Hopscotch

by Julio Cortázar

Also deep and contemplative · dense, classic literature

Horacio Oliveira, an Argentine intellectual living in Paris, wanders with a group of artist friends, the Serpent Club, and his lover La Maga, discussing jazz, art and metaphysics.
6

Pedro Páramo

by Juan Rulfo

Also deep and contemplative · dense, classic literature

Juan Preciado travels to Comala to fulfill a deathbed promise to his mother: find his father, the ruthless cacique Pedro Páramo.
7

The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon

Also deep and open-ended · dense, classic literature

Oedipa Maas is appointed executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul and her former lover.
8

2666

by Roberto Bolaño

Also deep and contemplative · dense, classic literature

The narrative follows five interconnected parts, beginning with four European academics tracking the reclusive German novelist Benno von Archimboldi.
9

Journey to the End of the Night

by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Also deep and contemplative · dense, classic literature

Ferdinand Bardamu, a cynical and nihilistic protagonist, begins his odyssey in the trenches of World War I, where he observes the senseless brutality of mechanized slaughter.
10

Pale Fire

by Vladimir Nabokov

Also deep and contemplative · dense, classic literature

Vladimir Nabokov’s 1962 novel is structured as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire," written by the fictional American poet John Shade, followed by a lengthy line-by-line commentary.
11

Absalom, Absalom!

by William Faulkner

Also deep and contemplative · dense, classic literature

Thomas Sutpen arrives in Mississippi in 1833 with a group of enslaved people and a plan to create a vast plantation called Sutpen’s Hundred.
12

The Waste Land

by T.S. Eliot

Also deep and contemplative · dense, classic literature

The Waste Land presents a fragmented vision of Europe following the First World War, utilizing a collage of classical mythology, religious texts, and urban vignettes.

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