Recommendations based on Written on the Bodyby Jeanette Winterson

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  1. The Passion

    by Jeanette Winterson
    A story of love, loss, and enduring passion between two people across time and space.

    Jeanette Winterson’s novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms ... (Goodreads)

  2. 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)

  3. 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)

  4. 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)

  5. 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)

  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. 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)

  8. 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)

  9. 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)

  10. 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)

  11. 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)

  12. 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)

  13. 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)

  14. 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)

  15. To the Lighthouse

    by Virginia Woolf
    Exploration of the complexities of human relationships and family life.

    The novel is set in the Ramsays' summer home in the Hebrides , on the Isle of Skye . The section begins with Mrs Ramsay assuring her son James that they should be able to visit the lighthouse on the ... (Wikipedia)

  16. 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)

  17. Giovanni's Room

    by James Baldwin
    A man's struggle for identity and acceptance amidst a tumultuous romantic relationship.

    David, a young American man whose girlfriend has gone off to Spain to contemplate marriage, is left alone in Paris and begins an affair with an Italian man, Giovanni. The entire story is narrated by ... (Wikipedia)

  18. Their Eyes Were Watching God

    by Zora Neale Hurston
    A woman's journey of self-discovery, liberation and empowerment.

    Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person – no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three ... (Goodreads)

  19. 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)

  20. 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)

  21. 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)

  22. Interpreter of Maladies

    by Jhumpa Lahiri
    Collection of stories exploring the struggles of Indian-American immigrants in the US.

    A married couple, Shukumar and Shoba, live as strangers in their house until an electrical outage brings them together when all of sudden "they [are] able to talk to each other again" in the four ... (Wikipedia)

  23. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

    by Jonathan Safran Foer
    A young boy's quest to find the lock that matches a mysterious key his father left behind.

    Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and ... (Goodreads)

  24. The Fountainhead

    by Ayn Rand
    A story of a brilliant architect who refuses to conform to the establishment, challenging the status quo.

    In early 1922, Howard Roark is expelled from the architecture department of the Stanton Institute of Technology because he has not adhered to the school's preference for historical convention in ... (Wikipedia)

  25. The Virgin Suicides

    by Jeffrey Eugenides
    A dark and mysterious tale about the mysterious suicides of five teenage sisters in a suburban town.

    As an ambulance arrives for the body of Cecilia Lisbon, a group of anonymous adolescent neighborhood boys recalls the events leading up to her death. The Lisbons are a Catholic family living in the ... (Wikipedia)

  26. The God of Small Things

    by Arundhati Roy
    A moving story of two siblings growing up in India, exploring love, politics, and class.

    The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car ... (Goodreads)

  27. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

    by Junot Díaz
    An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.

    Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)

  28. 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)

  29. 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)

  30. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

    by Michael Chabon
    Two cousins create a comic book superhero and find success and adventure in 1940s New York.

    The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City , where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin, Sammy Klayman. With the help of his ... (Wikipedia)