Recommendations based on The Passionby Jeanette Winterson

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

  1. Written on the Body

    by Jeanette Winterson
    A genderless narrator recounts their passionate love affairs with a married woman, exploring the complexities of desire and identity.

    Written on the Body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulation of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I ... (Goodreads)

  2. Sexing the Cherry

    by Jeanette Winterson
    A fantastical journey through time and space, exploring gender, sexuality, and the fluidity of identity.

    In a fantastic world that is and is not seventeenth-century England, a baby is found floating in the Thames. The child, Jordan, is rescued by Dog Woman and grows up to travel the world like Gulliver, ... (Goodreads)

  3. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

    by Jeanette Winterson
    A young girl's journey of self-discovery, navigating the boundaries between religion, sexuality and identity.

    Alternate cover edition for 9780802135162 This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a ... (Goodreads)

  4. 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)

  5. 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)

  6. Tipping the Velvet

    by Sarah Waters
    A coming of age story of a young woman's queer journey through Victorian England.

    Nancy "Nan" Astley is a sheltered 18-year-old living with her working-class family and helping in their oyster restaurant in Whitstable, Kent. She becomes instantly and desperately enamoured with a ... (Wikipedia)

  7. Franny and Zooey

    by J.D. Salinger
    A brother and sister's journey towards finding spiritual understanding and inner peace.

    The short story concerns Franny's weekend date with her collegiate boyfriend, Lane Coutell. Lane takes her to a fashionable lunch room, where Franny quickly becomes exasperated when he only appears ... (Wikipedia)

  8. The Shipping News

    by Annie Proulx
    A man's attempt to rebuild his life in a small Newfoundland town, discovering compassion and joy.

    The story centers around Quoyle, a newspaper reporter from upstate New York , whose father had emigrated from Newfoundland . Shortly after his parents' joint suicide, Quoyle's unfaithful and abusive ... (Wikipedia)

  9. Fingersmith

    by Sarah Waters
    A thrilling tale of two women who conspire to swindle a wealthy gentleman.

    Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in "a Fagin -like den of thieves" by her adoptive mother, Mrs Sucksby, is sent to help Richard "Gentleman" Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to ... (Wikipedia)

  10. Wide Sargasso Sea

    by Jean Rhys
    A woman's journey of self-discovery in the Caribbean, her story of emancipation from the shadows of colonialism.

    The novel, initially set in Jamaica, opens a short while after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ended slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834. , The protagonist Antoinette relates the story of ... (Wikipedia)

  11. On Beauty

    by Zadie Smith
    A story of two families, their struggles with identity, race, and class, and the beauty that can be found in unexpected places.

    On Beauty centres on the story of two families and their different yet increasingly intertwined lives. The Belsey family consists of university professor Howard, a white Englishman; his ... (Wikipedia)

  12. Stone Butch Blues

    by Leslie Feinberg
    A transgender woman's journey of self-discovery and search for acceptance in a hostile society.

    The narrative of Stone Butch Blues follows the life of Jess Goldberg, who grows up in a working-class area of upstate New York in the 1940s. Her parents, frustrated with Jess's gender nonconformity, ... (Wikipedia)

  13. Bastard Out of Carolina

    by Dorothy Allison
    A young girl's coming of age amidst poverty, abuse, and a broken family.

    The book opens with Bone relating the details of her birth. Bone's 15-year-old mother Anney gives birth to her after being seriously injured in a car accident. Anney, who is comatose during the ... (Wikipedia)

  14. White Teeth

    by Zadie Smith
    A multi-generational saga exploring identity, race, and culture in modern-day London.

    On New Year's Day 1975, Archie Jones, a 47-year-old Englishman whose disturbed Italian wife has just walked out on him, is attempting to take his own life by gassing himself in his car when a chance ... (Wikipedia)

  15. Beloved

    by Toni Morrison
    A haunting story of loss and resilience in the aftermath of slavery.

    Beloved begins in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio , where the protagonist Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, has been living with her eighteen-year-old daughter Denver at 124 Bluestone Road. The book ... (Wikipedia)

  16. Cold Comfort Farm

    by Stella Gibbons
    A young woman moves to the countryside to bring order to the chaotic lives of her relatives.

    Following the death of her parents, the book's heroine, Flora Poste, finds she is possessed "of every art and grace save that of earning her own living". She decides to take advantage of the fact ... (Wikipedia)

  17. Nine Stories

    by J.D. Salinger
    Nine short stories of insight into the human condition and its mysteries.

    Nine Stories (1953) is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for ... (Goodreads)

  18. 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)

  19. Everything Is Illuminated

    by Jonathan Safran Foer
    A young man's journey to trace his family's past, uncovering the secrets of the Holocaust.

    Jonathan Safran Foer (the author), a young American Jew, who is vegetarian and an avid collector of his family's heritage, journeys to Ukraine in search of Augustine, the woman who saved his ... (Wikipedia)

  20. The History of Love

    by Nicole Krauss
    A journey through a web of intertwining stories, searching for the meaning of love.

    Approximately 70 years before the present, the 10-year-old Polish-Jewish Leopold (Leo) Gursky falls in love with his neighbor Alma Mereminski. The two begin a relationship that develops over the ... (Wikipedia)

  21. 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)

  22. Cat's Cradle

    by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
    A satirical exploration of human folly, exposing the dangers of unchecked science and technology.

    Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ... Dr Felix Hoenikker, ... (Goodreads)

  23. The Blind Assassin

    by Margaret Atwood
    A complex, interwoven story of family secrets, love, tragedy, and mystery.

    The novel's protagonist , Iris Chase, and her sister Laura, grow up well-off but motherless in a small town in southern Ontario. As an old woman, Iris recalls the events and relationships of her ... (Wikipedia)

  24. Nightwood

    by Djuna Barnes
    A lyrical exploration of the human condition, examining the innermost depths of the soul.

    Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (TLS). That time is the period between the two World Wars, ... (Goodreads)

  25. 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)

  26. 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)

  27. Midnight's Children

    by Salman Rushdie
    A magical tale of India's history told through the story of a boy born at the stroke of midnight.

    Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem ... (Goodreads)

  28. Geek Love

    by Katherine Dunn
    A family of self-made circus freaks navigates love, loyalty, and morality in a world that shuns them for their differences.

    The novel takes place in two interwoven , time periods: the first deals with the Binewski children's constant struggle against each other through life. They especially have to deal with the ... (Wikipedia)

  29. Oryx and Crake

    by Margaret Atwood
    An exploration of a post-apocalyptic world, and the power of human nature.

    The novel focuses on a post-apocalyptic character called "Snowman", living near a group of primitive human-like creatures whom he calls Crakers . Flashbacks reveal that Snowman was once a boy named ... (Wikipedia)

  30. The Well of Loneliness

    by Radclyffe Hall
    A novel about a young girl named Stephen who struggles with her sexual identity and societal expectations in early 20th century England.

    The book's protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is born in the late Victorian era , to upper-class parents in Worcestershire who are expecting a boy and who christen her with the name they had already ... (Wikipedia)