Recommendations based on The Rings of Saturnby W.G. Sebald

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

  1. 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)

  2. Invisible Cities

    by Italo Calvino
    A fantastical exploration of the cities of the imagination and the possibilities of life.

    "Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young ... (Goodreads)

  3. Ulysses

    by James Joyce
    Epic narrative following a day in the life of an Irishman living in Dublin.

    It is 8 a.m. Buck Mulligan , a boisterous medical student, calls Stephen Dedalus (a young writer encountered as the principal subject of, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ) up to the roof of ... (Wikipedia)

  4. The Castle

    by Franz Kafka
    Townspeople's surreal struggle against a mysterious ruling power.

    The protagonist, K., arrives in a village governed by a mysterious bureaucracy operating in a nearby castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he claims to be a land surveyor summoned by the ... (Wikipedia)

  5. Infinite Jest

    by David Foster Wallace
    A journey through the absurdist world of entertainment, drugs, addiction & death.

    There are four major interwoven narratives: , These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest , also referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat ". The film is so ... (Wikipedia)

  6. Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings

    by Jorge Luis Borges
    A collection of metaphysical tales and philosophical musings exploring the nature of reality.

    Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in ... (Goodreads)

  7. 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)

  8. Swann's Way

    by Marcel Proust
    Autobiographical novel tracing the narrator's reminiscences of an aristocratic upbringing.

    Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar ... (Goodreads)

  9. Bartleby the Scrivener

    by Herman Melville
    A story of a mysterious scrivener whose refusal to comply with workplace demands leads to tragedy.

    The narrator is an unnamed Manhattan lawyer, aged around his late 50s, with a business in legal documents. He already employs two scriveners , Nippers and Turkey, to copy legal documents by hand, but ... (Wikipedia)

  10. 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)

  11. Naked Lunch

    by William S. Burroughs
    Surrealist exploration of addiction, delusions, and reality.

    Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. The book begins with the ... (Wikipedia)

  12. Ficciones

    by Jorge Luis Borges
    A collection of short stories exploring the limits of the imagination.

    The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his ... (Goodreads)

  13. 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)

  14. Middlemarch

    by George Eliot
    A grand narrative of life in a small English town, exploring the lives of its inhabitants.

    Middlemarch centres on the lives of residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards – the years up to the 1832 Reform Act . The narrative is variably considered to consist of ... (Wikipedia)

  15. Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

    by Cormac McCarthy
    A violent and bloody western epic, exploring the depths of human depravity.

    An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." ... (Barnes & Noble)

  16. 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)

  17. The Waste Land and Other Poems

    by T.S. Eliot
    A collection of poems exploring themes of identity, mortality, and spiritual and psychological desolation.

    The Waste Land and Other Poems , by T. S. Eliot , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including ... (Barnes & Noble)

  18. 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)

  19. Mrs. Dalloway

    by Virginia Woolf
    A day in the life of a high-society woman, delving into her inner thoughts and feelings.

    Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about ... (Wikipedia)

  20. 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)

  21. The Waves

    by Virginia Woolf
    Inner musings of six characters in search of individual identity, expressed through the ebb and flow of the sea.

    The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. Woolf is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together. Bernard ... (Wikipedia)

  22. Orlando

    by Virginia Woolf
    A fantastical journey through history and gender, exploring the complexities of identity.

    The eponymous hero is born as a male nobleman in England during the reign of Elizabeth I . He undergoes a mysterious change of sex at the age of about 30 and lives on for more than 300 years into ... (Wikipedia)

  23. 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)

  24. Herzog

    by Saul Bellow
    A man's existential journey to make sense of his life and relationships.

    Herzog is set in 1964 in the United States, and is about the midlife crisis of a Jewish man named Moses E. Herzog. At the age of forty-seven, , he is just emerging from his second divorce, this one ... (Wikipedia)

  25. The Complete Stories

    by Franz Kafka
    A collection of Kafka's surreal and haunting short stories, exploring the human condition and the absurdity of existence.

    The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max ... (Goodreads)

  26. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

    by Italo Calvino
    An exploration of the nature of storytelling, as two readers attempt to uncover the lost story of the novel's title.

    If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration—"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to ... (Goodreads)

  27. Stoner

    by John Williams
    An academic's life of quiet desperation, finding solace in literature.

    William Stoner is born on a small farm in 1891. After high school, the county agent advises he go to agriculture school. Stoner enrolls in the University of Missouri , where all agriculture students ... (Wikipedia)

  28. Invisible Man

    by Ralph Ellison
    A black man's journey towards self-actualization in a world of racial oppression.

    The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He ... (Wikipedia)

  29. A Confederacy of Dunces

    by John Kennedy Toole
    A satirical tale of an eccentric slacker's misadventures in New Orleans.

    Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found, here, "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles ... (Goodreads)

  30. Death in Venice

    by Thomas Mann
    A writer's journey of self-discovery in an Italian city, through a tangled web of art, beauty, and passion.

    The main character is Gustav von Aschenbach , a famous author in his early fifties who has recently been ennobled in honor of his artistic achievement (thus acquiring the aristocratic " von " in his ... (Wikipedia)