Recommendations based on Capitães da Areiaby Jorge Amado

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

  1. 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)

  2. The Hour of the Star

    by Clarice Lispector
    A poor Brazilian girl's life story, illustrating the struggles of the working class.

    The novel starts with the narrator, Rodrigo S.M., discussing what it means to write a story. He addresses the reader directly and spends a lot of time talking about his philosophical beliefs. After ... (Wikipedia)

  3. Baltasar and Blimunda

    by José Saramago
    A forbidden love story set against the backdrop of 1700s Portugal and its Inquisition.

    From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a “brilliant...enchanting novel” (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in eighteenth-century Portugal at ... (Goodreads)

  4. 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)

  5. 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)

  6. 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)

  7. The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly

    by Luis Sepúlveda
    A charming story of a seagull and a cat who teach each other lessons of determination and resilience.

    A cat. A seagull. An impossible task. A worldwide bestseller and the subject of a feature film, THE STORY OF A SEAGULL... is finally out in paperback! Her wings burdened by an oil slick, a seagull ... (Goodreads)

  8. 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)

  9. The Aleph and Other Stories

    by Jorge Luis Borges
    A collection of stories featuring metaphysical and philosophical explorations of the human condition.

    Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an ... (Goodreads)

  10. Habibi

    by Craig Thompson
    A love story between a young man and woman within the context of Middle Eastern culture.

    From the internationally acclaimed author of, Blankets , a highly anticipated new graphic novel. Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi tells the ... (Goodreads)

  11. The Three Musketeers

    by Alexandre Dumas
    An adventurous tale of friendship, courage, and battle in 17th century France.

    In 1625 France, d'Artagnan leaves his family in Gascony and travels to Paris to join the Musketeers of the Guard . At a house in Meung-sur-Loire , an older man derides d'Artagnan's horse. Insulted, ... (Wikipedia)

  12. 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)

  13. 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)

  14. Daytripper

    by Fábio Moon
    Each chapter explores a different moment in the life of an obituary writer, Brás de Oliva Domingos, as he navigates love, loss, and the meaning of life.

    What are the most important days of your life? Meet Brás de Oliva Domingos. The miracle child of a world-famous Brazilian writer, Brás spends his days penning other people's obituaries and his nights ... (Goodreads)

  15. Identity

    by Milan Kundera
    A novel about discovering one's true identity by examining the complexities and contradictions of life.

    There are situations in which we fail for a moment to recognize the person we are with, in which the identity of the other is erased while we simultaneously doubt our own. This also happens with ... (Goodreads)

  16. Strange Pilgrims

    by Gabriel García Márquez
    Collection of stories about Latin American travelers, exploring the depths of human experience.

    In Barcelona, an aging Brazilian prostitute trains her dog to weep at the grave she has chosen for herself. In Vienna, a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position ... (Goodreads)

  17. Exodus

    by Leon Uris
    The story of the birth of Israel, following the lives of Jewish refugees from WWII to the establishment of the state.

    In 1946 American foreign correspondent Mark Parker and American nurse Kitty Fremont reunite as old friends. Kitty is an American volunteer at the Karaolos internment camp on Cyprus , where thousands ... (Wikipedia)

  18. 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)

  19. Queen Margot

    by Alexandre Dumas
    An epic tale of political and religious intrigue, filled with love and revenge.

    The story begins in Paris in August 1572, during the reign of the Valois King Charles IX , it is the French Wars of Religion . The protagonist is Marguerite de Valois , better known as Margot, the ... (Wikipedia)

  20. 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)

  21. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

    by Elena Ferrante
    Two friends navigate the changing relationships of their youth and adulthood, and the consequences of their choices.

    In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her abusive ... (Goodreads)

  22. 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)

  23. The Sun Also Rises

    by Ernest Hemingway
    A group of expatriates in 1920s Europe, struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of WWI.

    On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée usually identified as Lady Brett ... (Wikipedia)

  24. 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)

  25. 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)

  26. Disgrace

    by J.M. Coetzee
    A professor's fall from grace in post-apartheid South Africa, reckoning with the consequences of his actions.

    David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own ... (Wikipedia)

  27. The House of the Spirits

    by Isabel Allende
    Epic family saga spanning generations, exploring the power of love and the impact of politics.

    The story starts with the del Valle family, focusing upon the youngest and the oldest daughters of the family, Clara and Rosa. The youngest daughter, Clara del Valle, has paranormal powers and keeps ... (Wikipedia)

  28. 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)

  29. 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)

  30. Purple Hibiscus

    by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    A young girl's struggle to find her place in a family and society torn apart by political turmoil.

    A previously published edition of ISBN 9781616202415 can be found, here., Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, ... (Goodreads)