Books like

Books like The Stranger

12 books with a reading profile close to The Stranger by Albert Camus. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

The Tartar Steppe

by Dino Buzzati

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Giovanni Drogo, a young officer, is posted to the Bastiani Fortress, an isolated outpost on the northern frontier overlooking a barren plain.
2

Rubāʻīyāt

by Omar Khayyam

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

This 1870 edition presents a collection of quatrains attributed to the eleventh-century Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam, translated into English verse by Edward FitzGerald.
3

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.
4

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.
5

Waiting for the Barbarians

by J.M. Coetzee

Also deep and contemplative · philosophy, literary

A magistrate runs a small frontier town in an unnamed empire.
6

The Metamorphosis

by Franz Kafka

Also deep and inward-looking · philosophy, literary

Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman and his family’s sole financial provider, wakes up one morning to find he has become a giant, literal insect.
7

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.
8

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.
9

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.
10

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.
11

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.
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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