Recommendations based on Signs Preceding the End of the Worldby Yuri Herrera

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

  1. Fever Dream

    by Samanta Schweblin
    A woman's surreal, unsettling journey into the depths of her subconscious.

    Waking up disoriented in a clinic, Amanda begins a conversation with a young boy named David. He urges Amanda to try to remember what happened before she came to the clinic. Through the constant ... (Wikipedia)

  2. The Savage Detectives

    by Roberto Bolaño
    A poetic journey of two young poets searching for a mysterious figure through Latin America.

    The novel is narrated in first person by several narrators and divided into three parts. The first section , "Mexicans Lost in Mexico", set in late 1975, is told by 17-year-old aspiring poet, Juan ... (Wikipedia)

  3. 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)

  4. A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

    by Lucia Berlin
    An exploration of female experience, weaving together stories of love, loss, and resilience.

    A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all ... (Barnes & Noble)

  5. Americanah

    by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    An exploration of race, identity, and belonging as two Nigerian immigrants experience life in America and beyond.

    Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to ... (Goodreads)

  6. The Hour of the Star

    by Clarice Lispector
    A poor Brazilian girl's life story, illustrating the struggles of the working class.

    The novel starts with the narrator, Rodrigo S.M., discussing what it means to write a story. He addresses the reader directly and spends a lot of time talking about his philosophical beliefs. After ... (Wikipedia)

  7. American Pastoral

    by Philip Roth
    A man's experience of the American Dream gone wrong, as his daughter's political radicalism unravels his family life.

    Seymour Irving Levov is born and raised in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey , in 1927 as the elder son of a successful Jewish American glove manufacturer, Lou Levov, and his wife Sylvia. ... (Wikipedia)

  8. 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)

  9. The Housekeeper and the Professor

    by Yōko Ogawa
    A gentle story of friendship and understanding between a brilliant mathematician and his housekeeper.

    The narrator's housekeeping agency dispatches her to the house of the Professor, a former mathematician who can remember new memories for only 80 minutes. She is more than a little frustrated to find ... (Wikipedia)

  10. Wolf Hall

    by Hilary Mantel
    A historical fiction about the rise of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII.

    England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry ... (Goodreads)

  11. Dept. of Speculation

    by Jenny Offill
    A woman's exploration of relationships, marriage, and motherhood amidst personal and familial struggles.

    Dept. of Speculation is a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all. ... (Goodreads)

  12. Austerlitz

    by W.G. Sebald
    A man discovers his past and identity through the story of a Jewish boy who escaped Nazi Germany.

    Jacques Austerlitz, the main character in the book, is an architectural historian who encounters and befriends the solitary narrator in Antwerp during the 1960s. Gradually we come to understand his ... (Wikipedia)

  13. This Is How You Lose Her

    by Junot Díaz
    A collection of stories about young love, heartache, and the struggle to find one's place in the world.

    On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a ... (Goodreads)

  14. Bone Gap

    by Laura Ruby
    A mysterious young woman disappears, and two brothers must unravel the mystery of her disappearance.

    Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps—gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. ... (Goodreads)

  15. 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)

  16. Parable of the Talents

    by Octavia E. Butler
    A post-apocalyptic tale of survival, exploring themes of faith and power.

    Parable of the Talents is told from the points of view of Lauren Oya Olamina and her daughter Larkin Olamina/Asha Vere. The novel consists of journal entries by Lauren and passages by Asha Vere. Four ... (Wikipedia)

  17. Blindness

    by José Saramago
    A society is plunged into chaos when everyone suddenly loses their sight.

    Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortune of a ... (Wikipedia)

  18. The Aleph and Other Stories

    by Jorge Luis Borges
    A collection of stories featuring metaphysical and philosophical explorations of the human condition.

    Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an ... (Goodreads)

  19. Pedro Páramo

    by Juan Rulfo
    A man returns to his hometown in search of his father, discovering the ghostly inhabitants.

    A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village. As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another ... (Goodreads)

  20. The Secret History

    by Donna Tartt
    A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.

    Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)

  21. Mason & Dixon

    by Thomas Pynchon
    Epic tale of two surveyors in colonial America, exploring the boundaries of knowledge and identity.

    Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon ... (Goodreads)

  22. Play It As It Lays

    by Joan Didion
    A woman's search for identity amidst the glamour and emptiness of 1960s Hollywood.

    The novel begins with an internal monologue by the 31-year-old Maria Wyeth, followed by short reminiscences of her friend Helene, and ex-husband, film producer Carter Lang. The further narration is ... (Wikipedia)

  23. In the Distance

    by Hernan Diaz
    A Swedish immigrant boy is separated from his family and embarks on a journey across America to find them.

    A young Swedish boy finds himself penniless and alone in California. He travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great push to the west. Driven back over and over again on ... (Goodreads)

  24. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

    by Sherman Alexie
    A young Native American boy's struggles to survive in a difficult world.

    The book follows a fourteen-year-old boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation near Wellpinit, Washington for a school year. It is told in episodic diary style, moving from the ... (Wikipedia)

  25. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

    by Haruki Murakami
    A man's journey of self-reflection to address his past and understand his place in the world.

    A mesmerising mystery story about friendship from the internationally bestselling author of, Norwegian Wood, and, 1Q84, Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names ... (Goodreads)

  26. Homesick for Another World

    by Ottessa Moshfegh
    Collection of darkly humorous short stories probing the human condition.

    «NO HI HA CAP HISTÒRIA QUE NO SIGUI ORIGINAL I ESTIGUI PERFECTAMENTCONSTRUÏDA. EL TALENT DE MOSHFEGH ÉS ÚNIC.» - NPR Si bé per les sevesnovel·les Ottessa Moshfegh ha rebut tota mena d'elogis i ... (Goodreads)

  27. Disgrace

    by J.M. Coetzee
    A professor's fall from grace in post-apartheid South Africa, reckoning with the consequences of his actions.

    David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own ... (Wikipedia)

  28. Blacksad

    by Juan Díaz Canales
    Hard-boiled detective stories set in a world of anthropomorphic animals. Blacksad navigates through a corrupt society to solve crimes.

    Private investigator John Blacksad is up to his feline ears in mystery, digging into the backstories behind murders, child abductions, and nuclear secrets. Guarnido's sumptuously painted pages and ... (Goodreads)

  29. Fifteen Dogs

    by André Alexis
    A group of dogs gain human intelligence and experience the highs and lows of life.

    Over drinks at Toronto's Wheat Sheaf Tavern, Hermes and Apollo get into a debate about whether animals could live happily if they had the same cognitive and speech abilities as humans. , They decide ... (Wikipedia)

  30. 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)