Books like When We Cease to Understand the World
12 books with a reading profile close to When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut. Deep; a moderate read.
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1
The Feast of the Goat
Also deep · history, narrative
Urania Cabral, now a New York lawyer, comes back to the Dominican Republic after thirty-five years to see her sick father, who once served in Rafael Trujillo's government.
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2
The Lacuna
history, narrative
The novel follows the life of Harrison Shepherd, a man navigating the political upheaval of mid-twentieth-century Mexico and the United States.
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3
The Solitaire Mystery
Also deep · philosophy, narrative
Hans Thomas travels with his father from Norway to Greece to find his long-lost mother.
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4
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
history, narrative
In 1799, Jacob de Zoet, a young Dutch clerk, arrives at Dejima, the artificial island in Nagasaki harbor that is Japan's only trading link with the West.
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5
The Night Watchman
Also deep · history, narrative
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at a jewel-bearing plant in rural North Dakota in 1953, and also a Chippewa council member.
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6
The Vaster Wilds
by Lauren Groff
Also deep · history, narrative
In the early seventeenth century, a young servant girl escapes a starving, disease-ridden colonial settlement in North America, fleeing alone into the winter wilderness.
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7
Matrix
by Lauren Groff
history, narrative
Cast out from the royal court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, seventeen-year-old Marie of France arrives at a destitute English abbey to serve as its new prioress.
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8
The Poisonwood Bible
Also deep · history, narrative
Nathan Price, a rigid evangelical Baptist, moves his wife Orleanna and their four daughters from Georgia to the Belgian Congo in 1959.
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9
The Underground Railroad
Also deep · history, narrative
Cora, an enslaved woman on a Georgia cotton plantation, flees her captors alongside a fellow laborer named Caesar.
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10
How Much of These Hills Is Gold
by C Pam Zhang
Also deep · history, narrative
Set against the declining years of the American Gold Rush, the novel follows Lucy and Sam, two orphaned siblings of Chinese descent, as they carry their father’s decomposing body across a harsh western landscape.
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11
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
by Tom Wolfe
Also deep · history, narrative
Tom Wolfe documents the cross-country travels of Ken Kesey and his community of followers, the Merry Pranksters, aboard their painted bus named Furthur.
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12
The Plot Against America
by Philip Roth
history, narrative
In this work of historical fiction, Philip Roth reimagines the 1940 United States presidential election.
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