Books like

Books like The Unconsoled

12 books with a reading profile close to The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro. Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a demanding read.

1

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

by David Foster Wallace

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

David Foster Wallace's collection of stories is made up of a series of interviews with men whose answers are given but not the questions.
2

The Magus

by John Fowles

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

Nicholas Urfe, a restless British schoolteacher, takes a job on the remote Greek island of Phraxos to escape a stagnant life in London.
3

Mrs. Dalloway

by Virginia Woolf

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, psychology

Clarissa Dalloway spends a June Wednesday in 1925 London purchasing flowers and preparing her home for an evening gala.
4

The Vegetarian

by Han Kang

Also deep and inward-looking · psychology, literary

Yeong-hye, a South Korean housewife, suddenly stops eating meat after a series of visceral, bloody dreams.
5

Milkman

by Anna Burns

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Middle sister lives in an unnamed city under the shadow of paramilitary violence and state surveillance, reminiscent of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
6

How to be Both

by Ali Smith

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

This novel connects two distinct eras through a dual-narrative structure that can be read in either order.
7

To Paradise

by Hanya Yanagihara

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, literary

This novel follows three distinct narratives set in a reimagined New York City across different centuries.
8

As I Lay Dying

by William Faulkner

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, literary

The Bundren family travels across rural Mississippi to transport the corpse of their matriarch, Addie, to her ancestral burial ground in Jefferson.
9

The Golden Notebook

by Doris Lessing

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, literary

Anna Wulf, an author living in 1950s London, attempts to counter her creative block and mental fragmentation by recording different facets of her life in four colored notebooks.
10

To the Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

Also deep and inward-looking · dense, literary

The novel centers on the Ramsay family and their guests during two summer visits to the Isle of Skye.
11

Freshwater

by Akwaeke Emezi

Also deep and inward-looking · psychology, literary

Adaeke Emezi’s debut novel focuses on Ada, a young Nigerian woman born with fractured consciousness.
12

Number9Dream

by David Mitchell

Also deep and open-ended · dense, literary

Nineteen-year-old Eiji Miyake travels from rural Yakushima to the neon-drenched cityscape of Tokyo to find the father he has never met.

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