Here are 100 books that Steppenwolf fans have personally recommended if you like
Steppenwolf.
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Philosophical novels challenge rather than appease. They subvert. They obscure. As a former acquisitions editor at major publishing houses, I am confounded by the scarcity of chances taken on books that don’t fit the status quo or, are "difficult." I am most interested in how books—even when they meander and cavort—lead to surprising and unsettling revelations. Or how they don’t lead to revelations at all but keep the reader guessing as to when some semblance of grace will be achieved. I don’t wish to sound pessimistic; if anything, I wish to be realistic. Philosophical novels are reflections of life, which is often confusing, contradictory, and, yes, difficult. With a touch of grace for good measure.
Bolaño wrote two epics: The Savage Detectives and the much more widely read 2666. Savage may be a sloppier novel—it follows two fictional founders of a fictional poetic movement called the visceral realists who are trying to track down the mysterious founder of the movement—but it’s also a novel about the elusiveness of meaning. With a lot of sex and violence thrown in for measure. The frame-story narrative informed my own, although I employed a lot less sex.
Winner of the Herralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize. Natasha Wimmer's translation of The Savage Detectives was chosen as one of the ten best books of 2007 by the Washington Post and the New York Times.
New Year's Eve 1975, Mexico City. Two hunted men leave town in a hurry, on the desert-bound trail of a vanished poet.
Spanning two decades and crossing continents, theirs is a remarkable quest through a darkening universe - our own. It is a journey told and shared by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, whose testimonies…
Philosophical novels challenge rather than appease. They subvert. They obscure. As a former acquisitions editor at major publishing houses, I am confounded by the scarcity of chances taken on books that don’t fit the status quo or, are "difficult." I am most interested in how books—even when they meander and cavort—lead to surprising and unsettling revelations. Or how they don’t lead to revelations at all but keep the reader guessing as to when some semblance of grace will be achieved. I don’t wish to sound pessimistic; if anything, I wish to be realistic. Philosophical novels are reflections of life, which is often confusing, contradictory, and, yes, difficult. With a touch of grace for good measure.
Perhaps the most “realistic” novel of this bunch, Ralph Ellison’s National Book Award-winning novel follows an unnamed black narrator’s life in a small southern town, as detailed through his memories, dreams, and desires.
Ellison didn’t intend to write a “protest novel,” apparently, but it has become exactly that: a protestation of the inequities of an American system designed to keep Black people in the shadows. The novel’s voice, though singular, is representative of an entire social movement. A perfect novel.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this deeply compelling novel and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator tells his story from the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
He describes growing up in a Black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood," before retreating amid violence and confusion.
Originally published in 1952 as the first novel by a then unknown author, it remained on the bestseller list for…
Philosophical novels challenge rather than appease. They subvert. They obscure. As a former acquisitions editor at major publishing houses, I am confounded by the scarcity of chances taken on books that don’t fit the status quo or, are "difficult." I am most interested in how books—even when they meander and cavort—lead to surprising and unsettling revelations. Or how they don’t lead to revelations at all but keep the reader guessing as to when some semblance of grace will be achieved. I don’t wish to sound pessimistic; if anything, I wish to be realistic. Philosophical novels are reflections of life, which is often confusing, contradictory, and, yes, difficult. With a touch of grace for good measure.
This one needs no plot description. If you don’t know what The Wizard of Oz is about, then I don’t know what to tell you. Watch the movie, or better yet, read the book. It’s considered a children’s classic, but like the best kid-lit, there is so much sinisterism and cynicism hiding behind the curtain (no pun intended).
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'"Come along, Toto," she said. "We will go to the Emerald City and ask the Great Oz how to get back to Kansas again."'
Swept away from her home in Kansas by a tornado, Dorothy and her dog Toto find themselves stranded in the fantastical Land of Oz. As instructed by the Good Witch of the North and the Munchkins, Dorothy sets off on the yellow brick road to try and find her way to the Emerald City and the Wizard of Oz, who can help her get home.…
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in…
Philosophical novels challenge rather than appease. They subvert. They obscure. As a former acquisitions editor at major publishing houses, I am confounded by the scarcity of chances taken on books that don’t fit the status quo or, are "difficult." I am most interested in how books—even when they meander and cavort—lead to surprising and unsettling revelations. Or how they don’t lead to revelations at all but keep the reader guessing as to when some semblance of grace will be achieved. I don’t wish to sound pessimistic; if anything, I wish to be realistic. Philosophical novels are reflections of life, which is often confusing, contradictory, and, yes, difficult. With a touch of grace for good measure.
When one reads Bernhard, one never reads anything else the same again. In fact, every story feels false by comparison. Maybe it’s because The Loser is written in one unbroken paragraph or because it repeats a line ad nauseum or because the story, in any other writer’s hands, would feel mawkish.
But this novel about a triangular intellectual relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and his two students is anything but. It’s funny, heartbreaking, and confusing. The way life is.
Thomas Bernhard was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. His formal innovation ranks with Beckett and Kafka, his outrageously cantankerous voice recalls Dostoevsky, but his gift for lacerating, lyrical, provocative prose is incomparably his own.One of Bernhard's most acclaimed novels, The Loser centers on a fictional relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who feel compelled to renounce their musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius. One commits suicide, while the other-- the obsessive, witty, and self-mocking narrator-- has retreated into obscurity. Written as a monologue in one remarkable…
I’ve always been fascinated by our creative urges and ambitions, and by what makes us who we are and why we make the choices we do. While I’m interested in many aspects of human experience and psychology, from the mundane to the murderous, I’m especially drawn to narratives that probe our deeper psyches and look, particularly with a grain of humor, at our efforts to expand our understanding and create great works—or simply to become wiser and more enlightened beings. What is our place in the universe? Why are we here? Who are we? The books I’ve listed explore some of these matters in ways both heartfelt and humorous.
Lady Oracle was one of the novels I read in the several years after first having the vague notion that I might like to write a novel akin to Steppenwolfbut that would be set in the approximate present day and have a female protagonist. As Lady Oracle’s main character is a writer who, after periodically reinventing herself, now fakes her own death, flees her intellectual, non-dancing husband, and holes up in an Italian village, I saw possible avenues for my own husband-leaving Kari. Would Kari flee to another country? Would she have secret lovers or a history of being fat? Would she, too, fake her own death? Kari ultimately didn’t follow many of Joan Foster’s paths, but she might have.
By the author of The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace
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The trick was to disappear without a trace, leaving behind me the shadow of a corpse, a shadow everyone would mistake for solid reality. At first I thought I'd managed it.
Fat girl, thin girl. Red hair, brown hair. Polish aristocrat, radical husband. Joan Foster has dozens of different identities, and she's utterly confused by them all. After a life spent running away from difficult situations, she decides to escape to a hill town in Italy to take stock of her life.
I’ve always been fascinated by our creative urges and ambitions, and by what makes us who we are and why we make the choices we do. While I’m interested in many aspects of human experience and psychology, from the mundane to the murderous, I’m especially drawn to narratives that probe our deeper psyches and look, particularly with a grain of humor, at our efforts to expand our understanding and create great works—or simply to become wiser and more enlightened beings. What is our place in the universe? Why are we here? Who are we? The books I’ve listed explore some of these matters in ways both heartfelt and humorous.
I’ve been a devotee of Robertson Davies since my early twenties, when my alternately terrifying and delightful supervisor at the Pacific Lumber Company recommended Fifth Business to me. While all of Davies’s mature novels (the Deptford trilogy and the Cornish trilogy, as well as The Cunning Man) have commonalities with my own novel in their explorations of creativity and the psyche, here I’m recommending The Lyre of Orpheus. Why? It tells the simultaneously comic and deep story of a group of foundation directors who find themselves sponsoring and even helping script an opera begun by E.T.A. Hoffmann, now to be completed by their protégé, a brilliant but obnoxious and somewhat gender-ambiguous young composer. Davies’s account of the opera’s genesis and production helped me create my characters’ own theater piece.
Hailed as a literary masterpiece, Robertson Davies' The Cornish Trilogy comes to a brilliant conclusion in the bestselling Lyre of Orpheus.
There is an important decision to be made. The Cornish Foundation is thriving under the directorship of Arthur Cornish when Arthur and his beguiling wife, Maria Theotoky, decide to undertake a project worthy of Francis Cornish -- connoisseur, collector, and notable eccentric -- whose vast fortune endows the Foundation. The grumpy, grimy, extraordinarily talented music student Hulda Schnakenburg is commissioned to complete E. T .A. Hoffmann's unfinished operaArthur of Britain, or The Magnanimous Cuckold; and the scholarly priest Simon…
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria…
I’ve always been fascinated by our creative urges and ambitions, and by what makes us who we are and why we make the choices we do. While I’m interested in many aspects of human experience and psychology, from the mundane to the murderous, I’m especially drawn to narratives that probe our deeper psyches and look, particularly with a grain of humor, at our efforts to expand our understanding and create great works—or simply to become wiser and more enlightened beings. What is our place in the universe? Why are we here? Who are we? The books I’ve listed explore some of these matters in ways both heartfelt and humorous.
Pastoralis one of my favorite recent discoveries. It’s one of a quincunx of novels linked by exploration of five classic literary genres—in this case the currently unfashionable pastoral. Newly ordained priest Christopher Pennant isn’t greatly pleased that his first parish assignment is to a rural town where sheep are numerous. He assumes he’ll be a suitable shepherd to the humans, people he expects to be simple and straightforward. Of course, they aren’t. They’re not only as complex as people anywhere else, but very unexpected. Father Pennant not only finds he has a self-appointed cello-playing chef as rectory caretaker, but he witnesses three possible miracles. Or are they trickery? I love the depth and gentle humor in the priest’s attempts to understand his parishioners and himself. And nature, too.
There were plans for an official welcome. It was to take place the following Sunday. But those who came to the rectory on Father Pennant's second day were the ones who could not resist seeing him sooner. Here was the man to whom they would confess the darkest things. It was important to feel him out. Mrs Young, for instance, after she had seen him eat a piece of her macaroni pie, quietly asked what he thought of adultery. Andre Alexis brings a modern sensibility and a new liveliness to an age-old genre, the pastoral. For his very first parish,…
I’ve always been fascinated by our creative urges and ambitions, and by what makes us who we are and why we make the choices we do. While I’m interested in many aspects of human experience and psychology, from the mundane to the murderous, I’m especially drawn to narratives that probe our deeper psyches and look, particularly with a grain of humor, at our efforts to expand our understanding and create great works—or simply to become wiser and more enlightened beings. What is our place in the universe? Why are we here? Who are we? The books I’ve listed explore some of these matters in ways both heartfelt and humorous.
Sorcerersis the tale of teenaged Eliot, who’s growing up in Philadelphia in the 1950s and strives to learn magic. Let’s not confuse this with the magic found in Harry Potter, the Narnia books, or in any of today’s fantasy worlds; Eliot studies basic stage-magic tricks and gains entrance to the Sorcerers, a club of aspiring teen magicians. Some Sorcerers are adept and elegant; others graceless gawks. As the novel develops, there's mystery, and to everyone's surprise, some of what might be termed "real magic" and strange power. This is a bildungsroman about human possibility, which is what prompts me to recommend it here. It's subtle and unusual, with a deep understanding of humanity and spiritual development. I've not encountered many novels that attempt what this one does.
In this novel steeped in esoteric wisdom, a young man joins a club of teenage magicians called The Sorcerer's Apprentices and is swept up into a world of magic.
I have been writing fiction since an early age, and I naturally create central female characters that I hope are warm, funny, and in some way flawed. Modules of my university degree dealt with psychology and sociology, and I automatically studied other people to inspire elements of my character. Lee Child is quoted as saying readers remember characters more than the plot, so when compiling my list, I recalled five female leads that have made me laugh, cringe, and relate to in equal measure. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
Louisa Clark is a lively heroine in the most somber, complicated circumstances, which elevates this book from a normal rom-com to something tender and profound. JoJo Moyes has done a fantastic job combining humor and sadness in this tale of love and hope.
The book deals with the perplexing debate around assisted suicide through the characters, and as a reader accustomed to upbeat endings, I couldn’t see how this would end well. And I’m glad it didn’t. Sometimes, we need a bittersweet blow to the stomach and a good old cry.
THE MAJOR FILM AND THE NEW YORK TIMES NO.1 BESTSELLING NOVEL THAT IS LOVED AROUND THE WORLD, ME BEFORE YOU . . .
Will needed Lou as much as she needed him, but will her love be enough to save his life?
Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun teashop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.
What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps…
Dolça Llull Prat, a wealthy Barcelona woman, is only 15 when she falls in love with an impoverished poet-solder. Theirs is a forbidden relationship, one that overcomes many obstacles until the fledgling writer renders her as the lowly Dulcinea in his bestseller.
From early adolescence through my career as an English professor, I was deeply drawn to romance and romantic fiction as a form of pleasure, comfort, and hope. My new book is personal and intimate, not scholarly. Weaving together my expertise in the subject of romance fiction with the story of passionate love in my own life, my book Loveland: A Memoir of Romance and Fiction is about the experiences I've had, inside the culture of romance in which women are immersed. I have a view of passion that is not a conventional one as I trace a way forward for myself, and perhaps others as well.
This novel of unrequited (or is it?) mad love for a married woman was so popular that many young men of the time took to wearing the yellow waistcoat that our hero Werther sports in the novel. Werther’s sensitivity and passionate nature were the essence of Romantic-era values.
Unlike Lancelot, Werther is not a hyper-masculine, aggressive guy pursuing love; instead, he moons around talking with Lotte, his beloved, about life, love, and poetry. I must say I’d take Werther over Lancelot any day, but as with the Werthers in my life, it doesn’t turn out well.
Lotte becomes his entire world, but she is a virtuous wife to her dull husband, so she tries to friend-zone him. He isn’t having it, but she holds fast. This more than disappoints poor Werther, as you will see.
One of the world's first bestsellers, this tragic masterpiece attained an instant and lasting success upon its 1774 publication, catapulting the author to the forefront of the German literary movement known as Sturm und Drang. A burst of parodies, operas, poems, and plays based on The Sorrows of Young Werther rapidly ensued, along with the cultlike following of young romantics across Europe who affected the manner of the novel's passionate and self-destructive hero. Young Werther bares his soul to readers in the form of alternately joyful and despairing letters about his unrequited love. His story marks the initial great achievement…
