Powered by a book like {foo}
Recommendations based on Spring Snowby Yukio Mishima
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
by Yukio Mishima
A sailor and his forbidden relationship with a young boy, exploring the themes of aggression and loyalty.
Much of the story is told following the actions of Noboru Kuroda, an adolescent boy living in Yokohama, Japan. He and his group of friends are good students but they are secretly a gang. They believe ... (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)
Kokoro
by Natsume Sōseki
Story of an elderly man's search for companionship and solace amid loneliness and heartache.
Part I – “Sensei and I” As the novel opens, the narrator has been left on his own in Kamakura after his friend, who invited him to vacation there, is called home by his family. One day, after ... (Wikipedia)
Confessions of a Mask
by Yukio Mishima
A young man's inner turmoil as he struggles to reconcile his true self with society's expectations.
The protagonist is referred to in the story as Kochan, which is the diminutive of the author's real name: Kimitake. Being raised during Japan's era of right-wing militarism and Imperialism, he ... (Wikipedia)
Snow Country
by Yasunari Kawabata
A story of forbidden love between a Tokyo sophisticate and a geisha in the secluded depths of a mountain village.
Snow Country is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial geisha that takes place in the remote hot spring (, onsen, ) town of Yuzawa . , (Kawabata did not mention the ... (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)
King Lear
by William Shakespeare
An aging king's descent into madness reveals the consequences of pride and vanity.
Shakespeare’s King Lear challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the ... (Goodreads)
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)
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)
The Setting Sun
by Osamu Dazai
A family of aristocrats in post-WWII Japan struggles to adapt to a changing society and their own decline.
After World War II, a small aristocratic family in Japan has lost all of their money. The family consists of three people: Kazuko, her brother Naoji, and their mother. Naoji is a soldier in the South ... (Wikipedia)
A Personal Matter
by Kenzaburō Ōe
A man’s personal struggles with the birth of his disabled son, the consequences of his actions and his search for redemption.
The plot follows the story of Bird, a 27 year old Japanese man. The book starts with him wondering about a hypothetical trip to Africa, which is a recurrent theme in his mind throughout the story. ... (Wikipedia)
The Plague
by Albert Camus
A small town in Algeria is struck by a deadly plague, testing the courage and faith of its citizens.
The book begins with an epigraph quoting Daniel Defoe , author of, A Journal of the Plague Year, . In the town of Oran, thousands of rats, initially unnoticed by the populace, begin to die in the ... (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)
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)
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe
A man finds himself stuck in a remote village, struggling to escape a mysterious sand pit.
In 1955, , Jumpei Niki, , a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a ... (Wikipedia)
Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the boundaries between the real and surreal.
Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd-numbered chapters tell the 15-year-old ... (Wikipedia)
No Longer Human
by Osamu Dazai
A young man's struggles with emotional turmoil and suicidal ideation.
Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human , this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a ... (Goodreads)
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)
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)
Journey to the End of the Night
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
A darkly comic, nihilistic journey of self-discovery, following a man into the heart of an absurd world.
Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper-realistic, boiling over with black humor Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper realistic—boils over with bitter humor and revulsion at ... (Barnes & Noble)
Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A portrait of the struggles of a troubled man, exploring his inner turmoil.
The novel is divided into two parts. Serving as an introduction into the mind of the narrator, the first part of Notes from Underground is split into nine chapters: The narrator observes that utopian ... (Wikipedia)
Amerika
by Franz Kafka
A young man's surreal journey through a bizarre and dystopian version of America.
The story describes the bizarre wanderings of sixteen-year-old European immigrant Karl Roßmann, who was forced to go to New York City to escape the scandal of his seduction by a housemaid. As the ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Thousand Cranes
by Yasunari Kawabata
A tale of love, loss, and longing set in traditional Japan.
The novel is set in Japan after World War II . The protagonist, Kikuji, who has been orphaned, becomes involved with Mrs. Ota, a former mistress of his father's. She commits suicide, seemingly ... (Wikipedia)
Out
by Natsuo Kirino
Exploration of the dark side of modern society through the story of four female factory workers.
The novel tells the tales of four women, working the graveyard shift at a Japanese bento factory. All four women live hard lives. Masako, the leader of the four women, feels completely alienated from ... (Wikipedia)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
by Raymond Carver
Exploration of relationships, revealing the complexities of love and its many forms.
Alternate-cover edition can be found, here, In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting ... (Goodreads)
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)
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)
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)
