16 books like The Book of Disquiet

A major part of why I read is to feel. Few books have moved me as strongly as this one. I deeply loved John Grady, and reading this book as he fought for love, his life, and the lives of his friends was a terribly painful experience.

Of course, it was worth it for the redemption, the passion and fidelity, the horses, the rivers, and the open plains. The emotions of McCarthy’s characters blaze through their sparse and natural dialogue.

When I emerged, heart wrung out and now strangely energised and peaceful, I felt differently about the world and for a while found it easier to belong to. My sense that beauty could emerge from adversity had been bolstered. 

A poignant, perceptive memoir of the author’s time in Africa—and her experiences there, her discovery of love and the loss of that love; evocations of people and sky, contemplations of weather and landscape unlike any other I’ve read.

It should be read (and always honoured) because it’s as close to a reverie on sorrow and wonder, the mystery of stark wildernesses and solitudes, as I’ve found. It’s the book I wish I’d written, above so many others.

Although I have read a number of novels focused on friendship, this one stands out with particular vigor. It started the way I expected: two friends since childhood. The more I advanced into the reading, though, the more I perceived the two main characters—Elena and Lila—as the same person:  a sort of super-protagonist that incorporates not only the psychological traits of the two but their lives as well.

If it’s true that life is often a fight between who we are and who we would like to be, then this novel portrays that conflict masterfully. What I saw in this story, more than the recount of a friendship, is the power that lies hidden within each of us. Whether we annihilate it or let it bloom depends on the choices we make in our lives. 

Blake: an indispensable visionary of poetry—whose multi-media approach to poetry—his art, visual designs, words, images, mythic stories, lyrics, dramatic monologues, polemics on behalf of opening the doors of perception—continue to haunt and provoke, inspire and lift, perplex and illuminate, prophetically anticipate and speak from the frontiers of the wild, countering imagination. Blake is the Romantic poet par excellence, whose vocation of finding inspiration and vision through poetry itself goes beyond his time and place, reaching to us in our troubled, sometimes disabled pandemia times, ecological catastrophe times. With Blake's books, one work opens to another, and to another: and we see worlds in his words. He helps us to apprehend the whorling fluidities, emanating energies, in our circuit cosmos. 

Yes, yes, I know this book won a gold dagger… but I still doubt you have read it or heard of Robert Wilson. I loved this book for three reasons. First, Wilson can flat-out write. Even though the prose is almost lyrical, it still reads like a fast-paced thriller, not an easy combination to achieve. Second, I love Lisbon, and reading the book is like walking through the streets of this great city. Third, I love dual timeline books—when they are done right—and Wilson really nails it.

Zimler is an award-winning American writer who has lived in Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city, since 1990. I admire Zimler’s historical fiction for its fact-based accuracy, and The Last Kabbalist is a beauty for that reason. His acclaimed novel details the Portuguese inquisition and the massacre of its Jews in 1506. Via his incisive research and great storytelling, Zimler sheds light on this period of history unknown to many Portuguese; as a result, there is now a Jewish Memorial Plaque in Rossio Square in Lisbon’s city center, honouring the two to five thousand Jews who were massacred. 

I first read this book nearly twenty years ago and have been thinking about it ever since. It’s a relatively simple story, about a bored proofreader who literally rewrites the history of his hometown. But in the hands of a master storyteller like Saramago, the topic takes on a raft of existential questions about history, place, and our relationship to the past.

I love All the Names so much that I read it twice in a gap of ten years. I love it for two main reasons: how ordinary people can be immortalized by powerful writing and what decisions good people make in a moral dilemma. In his Nobel Prize award ceremony speech in Stockholm in 1998, Saramago said that his writings were to transform ordinary people into literary figures in order that he would not forget them.

He did exactly that in this book. An unknown woman was immortalized by the main protagonist, who was portrayed as an unloved, lonely clerk working at the Registry of Births, Marriages, and Deaths in Lisbon. As I was reading his story, I wondered what turned this unassuming, timid worker into a forger. Given the opportunity, would a good person turn into a tyrant? 

I really like Jack Higgins, a world-renowned author of mysteries and historical novels. As a history buff, I particularly liked this one because it is a thriller set during WW2, and I couldn’t put it down. WW2 was an amazing time filled with heroism, danger, and the constant threat of death, and Higgins makes me feel like I was there in the midst of it all.  

I am often asked for recommendations on where to go and what to see for visitors to Portugal, and I always recommend Rick Steve’s book. He doesn’t just cover the major attractions, he takes you into the small towns and villages, the remote beaches, and the local restaurants and cafés that will introduce you to the ‘real’ Portugal. Top tips, must-see destinations and clever itineraries will help you to pick out the best spots and the most memorable locations of this beautiful place I am proud to call home.