Books like

Books like To Live

12 books with a reading profile close to To Live by Yu Hua. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Set in the rural American South during the early twentieth century, this epistolary novel follows Celie, a young Black woman who begins writing letters to God after suffering years of physical and sexual abuse from her…
2

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Janie Crawford returns to Eatonville, Florida, and recounts her life to her friend Pheoby Watson.
3

Breath, Eyes, Memory

by Edwidge Danticat

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

Sophie Caco is raised by her aunt Atie in a Haitian village until, at twelve, she is sent to New York to join the mother she barely knows.
4

Out Stealing Horses

by Per Petterson

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man, has moved to a remote cabin in eastern Norway to live alone with his dog.
5

Winesburg, Ohio

by Sherwood Anderson

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Set in a small Midwestern town at the turn of the century, this collection of interconnected stories centers on George Willard, a young reporter for the local newspaper.
6

Train Dreams

by Denis Johnson

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Robert Grainier is a day laborer in the American West during the early twentieth century.
7

The Namesake

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

The narrative follows the Ganguli family, beginning with Ashoke and Ashima’s arranged marriage and subsequent relocation from Calcutta to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
8

Crossing to Safety

by Wallace Stegner

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

Wallace Stegner’s final novel tracks the lifelong bond between two couples, Larry and Sally McKelvey and Charity and Sid Lang, beginning in 1937 Madison, Wisconsin.
9

Dear Life

by Alice Munro

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Dear Life is Alice Munro's last collection, with ten stories of rural and small-town Canada.
10

Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor navigates thirteen months of adolescence in a claustrophobic Worcestershire village during 1982.
11

A Month in the Country

by J.L. Carr

Also deep and inward-looking · narrative, classic literature

Tom Birkin arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby in 1920, physically scarred and suffering from a nervous facial twitch following his service in the Great War.
12

The Summer Book

by Tove Jansson

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, classic literature

Six-year-old Sophia and her elderly grandmother spend their summer months on a tiny, granite island in the Gulf of Finland.

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