Recommendations based on Doctor Zhivagoby Boris Pasternak

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. War and Peace

    by Leo Tolstoy
    Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.

    The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (Wikipedia)

  2. The Brothers Karamazov

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.

    The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)

  3. The Master and Margarita

    by Mikhail Bulgakov
    A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.

    The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)

  4. The Iliad

    by Homer
    Epic tale of the Trojan War, depicting heroism and tragedy.

    Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, ... (Goodreads)

  5. All Quiet on the Western Front

    by Erich Maria Remarque
    A soldier's harrowing experience of the horrors of war.

    The book tells the story of Paul Bäumer, who belongs to a group of German soldiers on the Western Front during World War I . The patriotic speeches of his teacher Kantorek had led the whole class to ... (Wikipedia)

  6. The Unbearable Lightness of Being

    by Milan Kundera
    A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.

    In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)

  7. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

    by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
    A single day in a Soviet prison camp, detailing the hardships and struggle of the inmates.

    Ivan Denisovich Shukhov has been sentenced to a camp in the Soviet gulag system. He was accused of becoming a spy after being captured briefly by the Germans as a prisoner of war during World War II ... (Wikipedia)

  8. Heart of Darkness

    by Joseph Conrad
    A journey into the depths of the human psyche, exploring the darkness of colonialism.

    Aboard the Nellie , anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend , Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow ... (Wikipedia)

  9. Candide

    by Voltaire
    A young man's satirical journey through life, encountering misfortune and eventual optimism.

    Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a ... (Goodreads)

  10. The Name of the Rose

    by Umberto Eco
    A Franciscan friar investigates a series of murders in a medieval monastery, uncovering a sinister plot.

    In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)

  11. Love in the Time of Cholera

    by Gabriel García Márquez
    An epic love story spanning decades, exploring the power of true love.

    The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's ... (Wikipedia)

  12. The Idiot

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    A man's struggle to find his place in society, and the moral dilemmas he faces.

    Prince Myshkin, a young man in his mid-twenties and a descendant of one of the oldest Russian lines of nobility, is on a train to Saint Petersburg on a cold November morning. He is returning to ... (Wikipedia)

  13. The Trial

    by Franz Kafka
    A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.

    On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)

  14. A Farewell to Arms

    by Ernest Hemingway
    A story of unrequited love in the midst of war.

    The novel is divided into five sections or 'books'. Frederic Henry is first person narrator of the story. Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American paramedic , is serving in the Italian Army . The novel ... (Wikipedia)

  15. Don Quixote

    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
    An aging knight's adventures and misadventures, filled with chivalry, honor, and satire.

    Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in ... (Goodreads)

  16. Steppenwolf

    by Hermann Hesse
    The inner struggles of a tortured soul as he searches for redemption.

    The book is presented as a manuscript written by its protagonist , a middle-aged man named Harry Haller, who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. The acquaintance adds a ... (Wikipedia)

  17. Lonesome Dove

    by Larry McMurtry
    Epic tale of two former Texas Rangers on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana.

    It is the late 1870s. , Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus "Gus" McCrae, two famous retired Texas Rangers , run the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium in the small Texas border ... (Wikipedia)

  18. David Copperfield

    by Charles Dickens
    A rags-to-riches story of a young boy's adventures, trials, and tribulations.

    David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously ... (Goodreads)

  19. Sophie's Choice

    by William Styron
    A survivor of the Holocaust is confronted with a devastating moral dilemma.

    Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel, has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding house in ... (Wikipedia)

  20. East of Eden

    by John Steinbeck
    Exploration of the timeless struggle between good and evil, set against a backdrop of a family saga.

    In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas ... (Goodreads)

  21. Fathers and Sons

    by Ivan Turgenev
    A story of generational divide, exploring the differences between fathers and sons.

    Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg . He returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. His father, Nikolay, gladly ... (Wikipedia)

  22. Treasure Island

    by Robert Louis Stevenson
    A thrilling adventure of a young boy and a crew of rogues in search of buried treasure.

    An old sailor named Billy Bones comes to lodge in the rural Admiral Benbow Inn on the Bristol Channel , in England. He tells the innkeeper's son, Jim Hawkins , to keep a lookout for "a one-legged ... (Wikipedia)

  23. Tess of the D'Urbervilles

    by Thomas Hardy
    A young woman's struggles against societal expectations, and her journey of resilience and self-realization.

    Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141439594 . When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting ... (Goodreads)

  24. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    by James Joyce
    An exploration of a young man's struggle to find his identity and place in the world.

    The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an ... (Goodreads)

  25. On the Road

    by Jack Kerouac
    A young man's journey across America, seeking adventure and freedom.

    The two main characters of the book are the narrator, Sal Paradise, and his friend Dean Moriarty, much admired for his carefree attitude and sense of adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to ... (Wikipedia)

  26. As I Lay Dying

    by William Faulkner
    A family's struggle to fulfill the dying wish of their mother, amidst personal and societal challenges.

    The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish ... (Wikipedia)

  27. A Hero of Our Time

    by Mikhail Lermontov
    A story of a young man's journey through life and his experiences of love, betrayal and morality.

    In its adventurous happenings, its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues, A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the ... (Goodreads)

  28. Life and Fate

    by Vasily Grossman
    An emotionally charged exploration of the Soviet Union during World War II and the power of fate.

    The novel at heart narrates the history of the family of Viktor Shtrum and the Battle of Stalingrad . It is written, despite attempting to get away from it, in the socialist realist style, which can ... (Wikipedia)

  29. Zorba the Greek

    by Nikos Kazantzakis
    A man embarks on a journey of self-discovery, learning to embrace life with gusto and joy.

    The book opens in a café in Piraeus , just before dawn on a gusty autumn morning. The year is most likely 1916. The narrator, a young Greek intellectual, resolves to set aside his books for a few ... (Wikipedia)

  30. Chronicle of a Death Foretold

    by Gabriel García Márquez
    A murder mystery narrated by the townspeople and tracing the events leading up to the crime.

    The non-linear story, told by an anonymous narrator, begins with the morning of Santiago Nasar's death. The reader learns that Santiago lives with his mother, Placida Linero; the cook, Victoria ... (Wikipedia)