The best philosophical novels for readers who want a story to challenge and enlighten them

Whether you love him or hate him (as he was a tortured and unpleasant soul), Céline innovated the philosophical novel in the modern context and brought the genre to its pinnacle with Journey to the End of the Night. Reflecting on the horrors, absurdity, and stupidity of World War I, returning soldier Ferdinand Bardamu (a stand-in for Céline) finds himself equally miserable in “peacetime” serving as a doctor for the poor in Paris (Céline was trained as a doctor). Céline is occasionally compared to another French writer of philosophical novels: Jean-Paul Sartre. Journey is not heavily allegorical like some of Sartre’s fiction works are (such as No Exit); Céline simply “shouts” at you, and sometimes you’re benefited in hearing the shouting. In Journey’s portrayal of inter-war urban decay, one gets the sense that Céline agrees with Sartre’s “hell is other people” but Céline never says it out loud.

No book inspired me to write my own book more than Voltaire’s Candide, a biting critique (and simultaneous exaltation) of civilization in light of the technological and social changes of the Industrial Revolution. Voltaire’s story is (of course) absurd: it follows a young man named Candide as he progressively loses faith in humanity and transforms from a Leibnizian optimist to a proto-Schopenhauerian pessimist (as we age, many of us go through the same transformation). Neither Candide nor my book (if you will momentarily allow for such a vulgar equivocation) is a lightweight in terms of the philosophical content, either—even though both Voltaire and I seemingly intended our works to be silly. Candide is a laugh-riot (Voltaire is one of the greatest writers of all time for a reason). In it, he asks, what can be the meaning of life when life looks like this?

Before Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking film popularized the story was Anthony Burgess’ novel about the degenerate, London droogs. This disturbing tale—which centers around a band of “ultra-violent” criminals led by Alex—is inspired by Burgess’ own experience when he was attacked by Russian youths. The use of a modified Russian language among the droogs (which itself means “friends” in Russian) in A Clockwork Orange is critical to the novel’s philosophical approach. By employing Russian, Burgess plays “phenomenologist” and forces the reader to trust him by virtue of the reader’s assumed unfamiliarity with the book’s language. Questions of free will only arise in A Clockwork Orange after you are forced to confide in the criminal Alex—you have to. In the hellish world A Clockwork Orange portrays, there’s no way to trust anyone; not even yourself.

The Famished Road is often categorized as a novel of “magical realism” although the author rejects this categorization. Okri’s tale follows Azaro, a spirit child in Okri’s native Nigeria as he watches the post-colonial state transform with the acceleration of global technology. While Okri weaves the spiritual and physical realms into his narrative, the juxtaposition of the spiritual and physical realms for Okri is a cornerstone of traditional African religion (and is therefore not seen as “unrealistic”). More accurately, The Famished Road resembles Fyodr Doestoevsky’s Notes from Underground: a classic philosophical novel. In The Famished Road, Okri argues that there is no salvation on Earth—even for the spiritual realm that resides alongside us. Azaro sees the people of his village being exploited by politicians and foreign actors and there is nothing he—as a transdimensional creature—can do about it. Transforming Doestoevsky’s cynicism into something even more all-encompassing or “ontological,” Okri argues that not even spirits can affect the evil that occasionally pervades humanity.  

Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is the very first philosophical novel I read and it was one of the first books that interested me in philosophy. This interest has followed me over the course of my life. In Zen, an unidentified protagonist (who is a stand-in for Pirsig) recounts a motorcycle trip he takes with his son. Zen is interspersed with the unidentified protagonist’s discussion of Plato, namely Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, which is also the name given to the unidentified protagonist’s historical alter-ego: a creative writing teacher who goes insane trying to define “quality.” In Zen, Pirsig asks the question, “What is Quality?” (with a capital ‘Q’). Though not sufficiently answered in Zen nor Pirsig’s follow-up, Lola, the author’s exploration of quality through Plato is among one of the most ambitious—if imperfect—philosophical treatises ever written.