Powered by a book like {foo}
Recommendations based on Chess Storyby Stefan Zweig
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
When Nietzsche Wept
by Irvin D. Yalom
Exploration of the relationship between a doctor and his patient, a tormented philosopher.
From the acclaimed author of Love's Executioner and Schopenhauer’s Couch , comes a “fascinating…shrewd intellectual thriller” ( Los Angeles Times Book Review ) about pioneering Viennese psychoanalyst ... (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)
Steppenwolf
by Hermann Hesse
The inner struggles of a tortured soul as he searches for redemption.
The book is presented as a manuscript written by its protagonist , a middle-aged man named Harry Haller, who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. The acquaintance adds a ... (Wikipedia)
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
by Gabriel García Márquez
A murder mystery narrated by the townspeople and tracing the events leading up to the crime.
The non-linear story, told by an anonymous narrator, begins with the morning of Santiago Nasar's death. The reader learns that Santiago lives with his mother, Placida Linero; the cook, Victoria ... (Wikipedia)
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)
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 Overcoat
by Nikolai Gogol
A tale of a lowly bureaucrat's journey to reclaim his sense of self-worth.
The story narrates the life and death of titular councillor Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin (Russian: Акакий Акакиевич Башмачкин), an impoverished government clerk and copyist in the Russian capital of ... (Wikipedia)
Martin Eden
by Jack London
A young sailor's ambition for a better life leads him on a journey of self-improvement and exploration of the upper classes.
Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, ... (Wikipedia)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Süskind
A murder mystery set in 18th century France, exploring the depths of human obsession.
An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of ... (Goodreads)
Alamut
by Vladimir Bartol
A philosophical quest for power and truth, set in medieval Persia.
The novel is set in the 11th century at the fortress of Alamut , which was seized by the leader of the Ismailis , Hassan-i Sabbah or Sayyiduna (سیدنا, "Our Master"). At the start of the story, he is ... (Wikipedia)
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
A Franciscan friar investigates a series of murders in a medieval monastery, uncovering a sinister plot.
In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)
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)
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)
The Death of Ivan Ilych
by Leo Tolstoy
A man's journey of self-reflection in the face of death, confronting mortality and the meaning of life.
Ivan Ilyich lives a carefree life that is "most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible". Like everyone he knows, he spends his life climbing the social ladder. Enduring marriage to a ... (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 Sorrows of Young Werther
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A young man's struggle to reconcile his intense emotions with the realities of society.
This is Goethe's first novel, published in 1774. Written in diary form, it tells the tale of an unhappy, passionate young man hopelessly in love with Charlotte, the wife of a friend - a man who he ... (Goodreads)
Hunger
by Knut Hamsun
The story of a man's battle against poverty and his descent into near-madness.
The novel's first-person protagonist, an unnamed vagrant with intellectual leanings, probably in his late twenties, wanders the streets of Norway's capital, Kristiania ( Oslo ), in pursuit of ... (Wikipedia)
The Last Day of a Condemned Man
by Victor Hugo
A condemned man's reflections on life and death as his execution draws near.
A man who has been condemned to death by the guillotine in 19th-century France writes down his cogitations, feelings and fears while awaiting his execution. His writing traces his change in psyche ... (Wikipedia)
The Blind Owl
by Sadegh Hedayat
A surreal exploration of the human condition, touching on themes of despondency, futility, and nihilism.
Considered the most important work of modern Iranian literature, The Blind Owl is a haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation. Replete with potent symbolism and terrifying surrealistic imagery, ... (Goodreads)
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)
Death with Interruptions
by José Saramago
A mysterious phenomenon that stops all deaths leading to a dilemma of moral, ethical and social implications.
The book, set in an unnamed, landlocked country at a point in the unspecified past, opens with the end of death. Mysteriously, at the stroke of midnight on January 1, no one in the country ... (Wikipedia)
The Fall
by Albert Camus
A man's journey into alienation and despair, driven by a sense of absurdity in life.
The Fall, ( French :, La Chute, ) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus . First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. Set in Amsterdam , The Fall consists of a series of ... (Wikipedia)
The Pearl
by John Steinbeck
A poor diver's dream of wealth is dashed when his newfound riches ultimately bring unhappiness and tragedy.
Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their ... (Goodreads)
Oblomov
by Ivan Goncharov
A story of a man's struggle to break free from his life of stagnation and inactivity.
The novel focuses on the life of the main character, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov. Oblomov is a member of the upper middle class and the son of a member of Russia's nineteenth-century landed gentry. Oblomov's ... (Wikipedia)
The Forty Rules of Love
by Elif Shafak
A story of romance and spiritual enlightenment, exploring the teachings of a Sufi master.
Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy , a novel written by a ... (Goodreads)
White Fang
by Jack London
A wolfdog's journey from wild to domestication, navigating the complexities of human civilization.
The story begins before the wolf-dog hybrid is born, with two men and their sled dog team on a journey to deliver the coffin of Lord Alfred to a remote town named Fort McGurry in the higher area of ... (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)
Homo Faber
by Max Frisch
A middle-aged engineer's rational worldview is challenged when he embarks on a journey of self-discovery and falls in love with a young woman.
Walter Faber is an emotionally detached engineer forced by a string of coincidences to embark on a journey through his past. The basis for director Volker Schlšndorff’s movie Voyager . Translated by ... (Barnes & Noble)
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)
The Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A sci-fi exploration of utopian and dystopian societies, and the struggle for a better world.
Librarian note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN, 9780061054884,. Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the ... (Goodreads)
