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Recommendations based on Beauty Is a Woundby Eka Kurniawan
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
1Q84
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of two people entangled in a mysterious dual-world conspiracy.
The events of 1Q84 take place in Tokyo during a fictionalized year of 1984, with the first volume set between April and June, the second between July and September, and the third between October and ... (Wikipedia)
The Tiger's Wife
by Téa Obreht
A young doctor in a war-torn Balkan country uncovers the secrets of her grandfather's past, including his relationship with a mysterious woman known as the Tiger's Wife.
Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker ’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will ... (Goodreads)
The Orange Girl
by Jostein Gaarder
Story of a young girl's magical journey through time, discovering her family's history.
The film is based on a 2003 novel by the same name, written by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder . The main character is the young boy Georg who one day finds a long letter from his deceased father in ... (Wikipedia)
The Days of Abandonment
by Elena Ferrante
An exploration of womanhood and psychological turmoil in the aftermath of a broken marriage.
The whole story is based on the sudden end of a seemingly solid, happy marriage. Olga, a stay at home mother in her late 30s, is told by her husband Mario that he is leaving her and their two ... (Wikipedia)
Commonwealth
by Ann Patchett
Intertwining story of two families across multiple generations, and how their lives become intertwined.
It started at Franny Keating’s christening party. Bert Cousins wasn’t even invited, but looking for an excuse to get out of the house, away from his three noisy children and pregnant wife for a few ... (Wikipedia)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
A woman's radical decision to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle, leading to unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
The Vegetarian tells the story of Yeong-hye, a home-maker who, one day, suddenly decides to stop eating meat after a series of dreams involving images of animal slaughter. This abstention leads her ... (Wikipedia)
The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton
A young woman's struggle to navigate New York high society, in pursuit of financial security and true love.
Lily Bart, a beautiful but impoverished socialite, is on her way to a house party at Bellomont, the country home of her best friend, Judy Trenor. Her pressing task is to find a husband with the ... (Wikipedia)
The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Vietnam War refugee returns to his homeland and struggles to reconcile conflicting loyalties.
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be ... (Goodreads)
When the Emperor Was Divine
by Julie Otsuka
A Japanese-American family's struggle of survival in the face of wartime discrimination.
In "When the Emperor was Divine," Author Julie Otsuka gives a fictional retelling of the Japanese American experience during the Internment period of WWII. The story follows a Japanese American ... (Wikipedia)
Woman at Point Zero
by Nawal El Saadawi
A powerful novel about a woman's life in Egypt, her struggles with poverty, oppression, and prostitution, and her ultimate decision to face her fate on her own terms.
The novel opens with a psychiatrist who is researching inmates at a women's prison. The prison doctor speaks of a woman, Firdaus, who is unlike any of the murderers in the prison: she rarely eats or ... (Wikipedia)
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
by Yukio Mishima
A young Buddhist monk's descent into obsession and tragedy, in a search for beauty and perfection.
The protagonist, Mizoguchi, is the son of a consumptive Buddhist priest who lives and works on the remote Cape Nariu on the north coast of Honshū . As a child, the narrator lives with his uncle at ... (Wikipedia)
Human Acts
by Han Kang
An exploration of the devastating effects of political violence, told through the lens of one family's tragedy.
Human Acts deals with the May 1980 Gwangju uprising and the death of the young boy Kang Dong-ho. The novel is composed of seven chapters including the final epilogue, with each chapter tracing the ... (Wikipedia)
Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell
A dynamic narrative spanning centuries, exploring the interconnectedness of humanity.
The book consists of six nested stories; each is read or observed by a main character of the next, thus they progress in time through the central sixth story. The first five stories are each ... (Wikipedia)
The Buddha in the Attic
by Julie Otsuka
A story of Japanese picture brides, told through a chorus of their collective voice.
There is no plot in the usual sense of specific individuals going through particular events. The novel is told in the first person plural, from the point of view of many girls and women, none of whom ... (Wikipedia)
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
by Jonas Jonasson
An adventurous old man escapes a nursing home for an unexpected journey of self-discovery.
Allan Karlsson is about to celebrate his hundredth birthday, and his retirement home in Malmköping is planning to throw a party. Allan is not interested. Instead, he climbs out the window and ... (Wikipedia)
The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
A collection of stories about the Vietnam War, interweaving the past and present.
In 1979, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato —a novel about the Vietnam War—won the National Book Award. In this, his second work of fiction about Vietnam, O'Brien's unique artistic vision is again ... (Goodreads)
The Wonder
by Emma Donoghue
A nurse is sent to a small Irish village to observe a girl who claims to have survived without food.
In this masterpiece by Emma Donoghue, bestselling author of, Room, an English nurse is brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle — a girl said to have survived without ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Three-Body Problem
by Liu Cixin
A science fiction novel exploring the consequences of first contact with an alien civilization.
The story takes place in flash-forwards, flashbacks, and the present time. Below is a chronological plotline. During the Cultural Revolution , Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics graduate from Tsinghua ... (Wikipedia)
The North Water
by Ian McGuire
A gruesome, dark journey on a whaling ship to the icy north, uncovering the depths of human depravity.
A ship sets sail with a killer on board . . . 1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little ... (Goodreads)
The Painted Veil
by W. Somerset Maugham
A married couple's journey to uncover the truth of their relationship amidst a deadly epidemic.
Maugham uses a third-person-limited point of view in this story, where Kitty Garstin is the focal character . Garstin, a pretty upper-middle class debutante, squanders her early youth amusing herself ... (Wikipedia)
The Nix
by Nathan Hill
A middle-aged man's quest to discover the truth about his mother and his own identity.
The Nix is an American epic novel in 10 parts that follows community college professor of English, Samuel Andresen-Anderson who is struggling to find meaning in his life in the years following his ... (Wikipedia)
The Plot Against America
by Philip Roth
An alternate history of America, where a fascist president rises to power.
The novel is told from the point of view of Roth as a child growing up in Newark, New Jersey , as the younger son of Herman and Bess Roth. It begins with aviation hero Charles Lindbergh , who is ... (Wikipedia)
The Witch of Portobello
by Paulo Coelho
A spiritual journey of a woman's search for identity and purpose.
As the book begins, Athena is dead. How she ended up that way creates the intrigue sustaining the book. , The child, Sherine Khalil renames herself Athena after her uncle was discussing with her ... (Wikipedia)
Kitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto
A young woman's journey of self-discovery and healing, exploring the kitchen of her dreams.
From Mikage's love of kitchens to her job as a culinary teacher's assistant to the multiple scenes in which food is merely present, Kitchen is a short window into the life of a young Japanese woman ... (Wikipedia)
Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
A young man's journey of love and loss set against the backdrop of the 1960s.
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of ... (Goodreads)
Everyman
by Philip Roth
A man's life story told through his relationships, questioning the meaning of life and mortality.
The book begins at the funeral of its protagonist. The remainder of the book, which ends with his death, looks mournfully back on episodes from his life, including his childhood, where he and his ... (Wikipedia)
Sophie's World
by Jostein Gaarder
A journey of philosophical discovery told through a young girl's exploration of the world.
Sophie Amundsen is a 14-year-old girl who lives in Lillesand , Norway. The book begins with Sophie receiving two messages in her mailbox and a postcard addressed to Hilde Møller Knag. Afterwards, she ... (Wikipedia)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
by Richard Flanagan
A man's journey to reconcile his past and make sense of his actions during the Japanese occupation of Burma.
Dorrigo Evans has found fame and public recognition as a war veteran in old age, but inwardly he is plagued by his own shortcomings and considers his numerous accolades to be a “failure of perception ... (Wikipedia)
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
An outrageous satire of race and civil rights in modern America.
The novel concerns a narrator, referred to by his childhood nickname "Bonbon" or his last name, "Me," who attempts to reintroduce segregation and keep a slave named Hominy in Dickens, his Los Angeles ... (Wikipedia)
