10 books like The Brothers Karamazov

I’m often attracted to characters who seem to be haunted – whether by places, people, or their own past. Stanislaw Lem ups the ante a good deal by having his cast of characters apparently haunted by the entire ocean of the planet they’ve landed on. But that isn’t why I find Solaris so moving and intriguing. Just as we’re starting to orientate ourselves to how the planet can bend reality for the astronauts who are based there, Lem throws an entirely unexpected question into the mix – what if the ‘monsters’ don’t realise they’re ‘monsters’, what if they’re as bewildered by the situation as the ‘victims’? That blindsided me (which is another thing I like stories to do) and, for me, it adds a special layer of poignancy to the book.

Georgia-born Flannery O’Connor gifted the world with dozens of stories, which can be read individually or collectively.

Set on farms, in small towns, and off-the-beaten path, she colorfully explores both people and places, inviting readers along to do the same. Some stories are folksy, some are humorous, and some are dark, but one thread is constant: her highly individualized style is built on strong literary conventions.  

Nausea does not rely on the extreme or outlandish scenarios of science fiction to explore philosophical themes. Rather, this novel is about a person’s growing malaise over his conscious relationship to objects, people, and ultimately himself. It reaches into some very fundamental aspects of our relationship to the world, and asks you to look at the mere structure of existence after all particularities (names, shapes, colors, history, etc.) are wiped away, and then asks you how you feel about it. Through an existentialist lens, it also explores certain political questions. And for those more technically interested in philosophy, the novel does a better job of showing existentialism’s relationship to phenomenology than many academic papers. 

“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K, for without him having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” This is how Kafka’s stark novel The Trial begins. It is a thrilling, hilarious, and bleak tale, set in a strange bureaucratic world of bizarre rules and arbitrary justice. K never knows why he is on trial or what crime he is supposed to have committed. If you want to know where the adjective “Kafkaesque” comes from and what it means, read this book. And if you are a boss, remember that all organisations can show Kafkaesque tendencies from time to time: watch out for them!

This classic was one of the first ‘grown up’ works of fiction I read of my own accord, and the effect was profound.

The way the characters confronted prejudice, injustice, and racism as seen through a child’s eye was eye-opening for me. The setting was fascinating to me, as was the Depression era, and I developed an affinity for stories set in small-town farming communities during this time in history.

Scout’s realization that the world, or in this case her street, could be seen differently if one just stands on a neighbour’s porch. A new perspective on the same truth, just by looking at the same things from another point of view—this was a profound revelation to me, something I carry with me ever since reading this novel.

This was the book that impelled me to write my own account of superstition. I could have also recommended his masterpiece, The Selfish Gene, which I read as a teenager and got me into science in the first place but this unforgiving attack on religion spurred me to write a more balanced view that considered religion as a naturally emerging consequence of cognitive development. In fairness, The God Delusion does briefly mention evidence in support of a natural inclination, but this is outweighed by an agenda (that I do not share) to eradicate religion as pernicious indoctrination. Whatever your opinion of Dawkins, he is undeniably one of the most gifted science writers with a clarity of argument combined with a poetic beauty of prose.

Again, I chose a book that is given in the first-person point of view. Rather than using a variety of first persons to tell a story, Martel takes the main character, Pi, and uses him in back-and-forth narrations from various ages – young and in the moment, and older, looking back. As well, he uses Pi as a general narrator overall in the storytelling. This gives the illusion that perhaps the other characters are not so important, or rather they are not the point of the story. 

If you want to know what Kafka’s The Trial would have been like without a sense of humor, try reading Aeschylus. Though this ancient Greek tragedian does not aim for laughs (and does not get any!) his depiction of the furies of conscience has an elemental power and purity like a Beethoven motif or a Picasso masterpiece. The Eumenides may well be the first-ever courtroom drama, with Orestes on trial for killing his mother Clytemnestra. Aeschylus goes straight at the most difficult of human emotions—guilt—and like Sophocles, he explores it specifically in a family context. Who, after all, makes us more guilty than our parents? 

You may not think of The Merchant of Venice as a trial book, but the majority of Act IV takes place in a Venice courtroom where Shylock, Antonio, Bassanio, and the Duke thrash out the ‘pound of flesh’ business. In a sense, the play itself is a corrupt judgment against Jews, trafficking as it does in nasty anti-Semitic stereotypes. Shakespeare left it to later writers to give a more well-rounded account of Jewish people. But Merchant is at the same time a fine study of the rage that such racial injustice provokes, and as with pretty much everything Shakespeare ever wrote, it’s full of poetic imagery and memorably wise in every line.

Philosopher Eric Reitan offers a spirited rebuttal to Dawkins by arguing that belief in God isn’t necessarily irrational or harmful. In particular, Reitan defends the progressive faiths that are based on universal love rather than sectarian division and superstition. I especially enjoyed Reitan’s discussion of atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell, who compared religious faith to a belief in the existence of a “celestial teapot” that travels around the sun in an orbit so distant that it could never be observed by telescope. You can’t disprove its existence, but doesn’t it seem ludicrous? Can you explain how it got there?