100 books like The Quest for Corvo

By A.J.A. Symons,

Here are 100 books that The Quest for Corvo fans have personally recommended if you like The Quest for Corvo. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence

Emma Darwin Author Of This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin: a writer’s journey through my family

From my list on failing to write a book.

Why am I passionate about this?

Alongside writing, I’ve been running workshops, teaching and mentoring writers for nearly twenty years, helping people get unstuck and keep going. So I spend most of my working life thinking about creativity and writing—then suddenly I, too, couldn’t write the book I needed to write. Every book in this list is about not-writing for different reasons, in different circumstances, but between them they tell us so much about how we write, why we write, how we get writing to happen—and what’s happening when we can’t. These very different stories resonate with each other, and I hope some of them resonate with you.

Emma's book list on failing to write a book

Emma Darwin Why did Emma love this book?

First, because it’s incredibly funny. Geoff Dyer set out—he says—to write a sober, serious study of D. H. Lawrence, but life, travel arrangements, random people and his own inertia kept getting in the way. The story of his odyssey doesn’t just evoke all the things about writing that we’ve always suspected (that it’s hard; that it’s easy; that we often wonder why on earth we do it; that we never question that we want to do it). It also, by stealth, evokes and explains an amazing amount about Lawrence, and why he’s a writer that so many people love—or hate—so passionately. 

By Geoff Dyer,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Out of Sheer Rage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Recounts the author's experiences visiting the places D.H. Lawrence lived while actively not working on a book about Lawrence and not writing his own novel.


Book cover of The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

R. A. Sinn Author Of Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality

From my list on reimagining biography.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of sexuality who is fascinated by unknown stories that reveal the past to be way more complicated than we expect. I’ve written about same-sex marriage in early America, a teenage female poet of the American Revolution, a masculine woman who founded her own college, and a notorious British pederast. Now I’m working on the tale of a forgotten American sexual adventuress and jewel thief. I also have a longstanding research project about the history of food and sex from the eighteenth century to the present day.

R. A.'s book list on reimagining biography

R. A. Sinn Why did R. A. love this book?

In my secret heart of hearts, I wrote my most recent book, Unspeakable, for an audience of one: Janet Malcolm. All her prose is sharp, but her anti-biography of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes is spectacular in its exploration of the question: is it even possible to write a truthful biography?

By Janet Malcolm,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Silent Woman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Is it ever possible to know 'the truth' about Sylvia Plath and her marriage to Ted Hughes, which ended with her suicide?

In The Silent Woman, renowned writer Janet Malcolm examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath, with particular focus on Anne Stevenson's Bitter Fame, to discover how Plath became an enigma in literary history.

The Silent Woman is a brilliant, elegantly reasoned inquiry into the nature of biography, dispelling our innocence as readers, as well as shedding a light onto why Plath's legend continues to exert such a hold on our imaginations.


Book cover of All We Know: Three Lives

R. A. Sinn Author Of Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality

From my list on reimagining biography.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of sexuality who is fascinated by unknown stories that reveal the past to be way more complicated than we expect. I’ve written about same-sex marriage in early America, a teenage female poet of the American Revolution, a masculine woman who founded her own college, and a notorious British pederast. Now I’m working on the tale of a forgotten American sexual adventuress and jewel thief. I also have a longstanding research project about the history of food and sex from the eighteenth century to the present day.

R. A.'s book list on reimagining biography

R. A. Sinn Why did R. A. love this book?

Through sheer magic, Lisa Cohen manages to combine three lives that defy biography into a beautifully written group portrait of mid-century lesbian modernism. Although Cohen writes that “every biography is a disappointment of some kind,” her book about Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland thrilled me from start to finish.

By Lisa Cohen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked All We Know as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

All We Know is one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Best Books of 2012

A revelatory biography of three glamorous, complex modern women

Esther Murphy was a brilliant New York intellectual who dazzled friends and strangers with an unstoppable flow of conversation. But she never finished the books she was contracted to write―a painful failure, and yet a kind of achievement.
The quintessential fan, Mercedes de Acosta had intimate friendships with the legendary actresses and dancers of the twentieth century. Her ephemeral legacy is the thousands of objects she collected to preserve the memory of those performers and to document…


Book cover of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals

Susan Crane Author Of Nothing Happened: A History

From my list on books about Nothing, in particular: because Nothing always means Something.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by how we remember the past and why some things get written into histories and other things don’t. I realized that Nothing happens all the time but no one has thought to ask how we remember it. Once I started looking for how Nothing was being remembered, I found it all around me. Books I read as a kid, movies I’d seen, songs I’d heard – these were my sources. So when I started working, Nothing got done (yes, I love puns!).

Susan's book list on books about Nothing, in particular: because Nothing always means Something

Susan Crane Why did Susan love this book?

I haven’t recovered yet from the way Hartman recovers the lives of young Black women through historical photographs. The images were made to rob these women of their individuality, make them fit “types,” letting them say Nothing about themselves.

But Hartman writes like she’s talking to them, and they’re wonderful. She messes with categories used by authorities who thought they “knew” these women by their transgressions. I was utterly transfixed by how she imagined these women’s lives and loves in the ordinary stairways and back alleys they called home.

The photos are gorgeous. You could talk about them for days and still have more to think about—like how when it comes to women being framed for doing something wrong, maybe Nothing has changed.

By Saidiya V. Hartman,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading…


Book cover of The Kite Runner

Mary Albanese Author Of The All-Girl, No Man Little Darlin's

From my list on redemption that make you consider your values.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am Mary Albanese–mother, educator, and author. We all make mistakes, but in my career, it seems to me that how we deal with our mistakes is what defines us. An error can cripple us or teach us to become a better person. To me, nothing is more powerful than the path to redemption and forgiveness. I love these books because they make me feel as if I am inside the story, facing the hard choices. More than just stories, each one is a journey of transformation into the heart of the human soul. I hope you find these books as meaningful and profound as I have.

Mary's book list on redemption that make you consider your values

Mary Albanese Why did Mary love this book?

I found this book so shocking that I couldn’t put it down. I was so mad at Amir for betraying his friend Hasim that I didn’t believe he could possibly be redeemed. I didn’t think he deserved it. Yet, with skill and grace, the author takes us so deep inside Amir’s feelings and lingering shame that it reminded me of the times that I let someone down or said something I wish I hadn’t.

As much as I’d like to ignore my mistakes or pretend them away, this book shows me that there is always a way back to try to do the right thing. It might be hard. It will be humbling. But I am grateful to this book for reminding me to try. 

By Khaled Hosseini,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Kite Runner as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Afghanistan, 1975: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.


Book cover of Midnight's Children

Nile Green Author Of Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah

From my list on fascinating lives in far-off places.

Why am I passionate about this?

Aged seventeen, I set off for Istanbul on what turned into several decades of travels across the Muslim world. From the last nomad tents of Iran to the Sufi shrines of Pakistan and Afghanistan and the ancient cities of Syria and Yemen, I’ve met all kinds of fascinating and complex people. Although I write about the past, those living experiences always shape my approach to writing. As a biographer, I write about individuals who are intriguing but complicated—like all of us, only more so. And as a historian drawn to encounters between cultures, I write about how different parts of the world understand (and misunderstand) each other. 

Nile's book list on fascinating lives in far-off places

Nile Green Why did Nile love this book?

I am a historian by day. But I have always believed that artists—whether writers, painters, or musicians—capture the human experience of history and, moreover, convey it in an enduring form for future generations far more effectively than historians. 

Historians have to present a single line of analysis or argument, which inevitably and properly makes events of a particular historical period meaningful to the particular moment in time when they are writing. A true artist can transcend both of those times. In my view, Rushdie’s book achieves that for the period, or generation, after Indian independence in 1947.

I have lived in India and written a lot about Indian history myself, including a book about Bombay, where Rushdie was partly raised. So, I have enjoyed and admired many of his earlier books, but this one remains his great achievement as a work of historical art.

By Salman Rushdie,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked Midnight's Children as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

*WINNER OF THE BOOKER AND BEST OF THE BOOKER PRIZE*

**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK**

'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' Guardian

Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most…


Book cover of The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life

Nile Green Author Of Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah

From my list on fascinating lives in far-off places.

Why am I passionate about this?

Aged seventeen, I set off for Istanbul on what turned into several decades of travels across the Muslim world. From the last nomad tents of Iran to the Sufi shrines of Pakistan and Afghanistan and the ancient cities of Syria and Yemen, I’ve met all kinds of fascinating and complex people. Although I write about the past, those living experiences always shape my approach to writing. As a biographer, I write about individuals who are intriguing but complicated—like all of us, only more so. And as a historian drawn to encounters between cultures, I write about how different parts of the world understand (and misunderstand) each other. 

Nile's book list on fascinating lives in far-off places

Nile Green Why did Nile love this book?

I am fascinated by extraordinary lives, especially lives that cross borders and cultures. I also enjoy biographies set against major historical events, all the more so when an individual life is used to show an apparently familiar era of history in a new light. Tom Reiss’s book manages all this superbly. 

This book reconstructs the life of Lev Nussimbaum, who was born in Kiev in what is now Ukraine but was then imperial Russia. But he spent a good part of his life in Baku when that cosmopolitan Russian imperial port was the center of the world’s first great oil boom. Having traveled myself in the Caucasus region, as well as other former parts of the Russian Empire (and Soviet Union), I found Reiss’s account of that collapsing imperial culture quite fascinating. But it is the story of Levor, as he twice reinvented himself, Essad Bey and Kurban…

By Tom Reiss,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Orientalist as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A thrilling page-turner of epic proportions, Tom Reiss’s panoramic bestseller tells the true story of a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince in Nazi Germany. Lev Nussimbaum escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan and, as “Essad Bey,” became a celebrated author with the enduring novel Ali and Nino as well as an adventurer, a real-life Indiana Jones with a fatal secret. Reiss pursued Lev’s story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal–and sometimes as heartbreaking–as his subject’s life.


Book cover of The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism

Nile Green Author Of Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah

From my list on fascinating lives in far-off places.

Why am I passionate about this?

Aged seventeen, I set off for Istanbul on what turned into several decades of travels across the Muslim world. From the last nomad tents of Iran to the Sufi shrines of Pakistan and Afghanistan and the ancient cities of Syria and Yemen, I’ve met all kinds of fascinating and complex people. Although I write about the past, those living experiences always shape my approach to writing. As a biographer, I write about individuals who are intriguing but complicated—like all of us, only more so. And as a historian drawn to encounters between cultures, I write about how different parts of the world understand (and misunderstand) each other. 

Nile's book list on fascinating lives in far-off places

Nile Green Why did Nile love this book?

This is a book about the collision of worlds and ideologies, told through the life of a single woman. This is a biography of Margaret Marcus, a small-town Jewish girl in midcentury America who converted to Islam, emigrated to Pakistan, and became a student of the Islamist political theorist Abul Ala Mawdudi. Under the name Maryam Jameelah, Margaret wrote many books condemning the corruption of Western capitalist society. And then came September 11… 

I found this book absolutely gripping and no less absorbing—and unsettling—in its moral power. Deborah Baker is a truly extraordinary biographer, and I admire her artistry, research, and instinct for an important life history in equal measure. Even though I have traveled extensively across Pakistan myself and written about many of the themes Baker explores, I still learned a great deal from this deeply serious but no less spellbinding biography. 

By Deborah Baker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Convert as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What drives a young woman raised in a postwar New York City suburb to convert to Islam, abandon her country and Jewish faith, and embrace a life of exile in Pakistan? The Convert tells the story of how Margaret Marcus of Larchmont became Maryam Jameelah of Lahore, one of the most trenchant and celebrated voices of Islam's argument with the West. Like many compelling and true tales, The Convert is stranger than fiction. It is both a gripping story of a life lived on the radical edge and a profound meditation on the roots of terror in our age of…


Book cover of Memoirs of Hadrian

Larry Mellman Author Of The Man With Sapphire Eyes

From my list on historical fiction with a twist.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always loved historical fiction as a reader, but my passion to write it caught fire during the years I lived in Venice, Italy, when I discovered the curious institution of the ballot boy within the Byzantine complexities of the thousand-year Venetian Republic. Since ballot boys were randomly chosen over a period of six hundred years, choosing my particular Doge and ballot boy required a survey of the entire field before I circled in on Venice, 1368, IMHO the peak brilliance of that maritime empire. It is a peculiarity of history that the names of all 130 doges of Venice are recorded, but none of their ballot boys are mentioned. The challenge was irresistible. 

Larry's book list on historical fiction with a twist

Larry Mellman Why did Larry love this book?

It’s not Hadrian’s love affair with the beautiful boy Antinous that swept me off my feet, nor the way Hadrian makes him a god after his mysterious death and builds a city dedicated to worshiping him.

That’s only a small part of a book overflowing with the emperor’s interior life, his fears and doubts and dreams. Yourcenar spent most of her life on and off writing this book, her life’s work. Filled with the exhilaration and perplexity of achieving absolute power and then holding onto it, we experience Hadrian as a profoundly paradoxical genius from the inside out. 

By Marguerite Yourcenar, Grace Frick,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Memoirs of Hadrian as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Framed as a letter from the Roman Emperor Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian is translated from the French by Grace Frick with an introduction by Paul Bailey in Penguin Modern Classics.

In her magnificent novel, Marguerite Yourcenor recreates the life and death of one of the great rulers of the ancient world. The Emperor Hadrian, aware his demise is imminent, writes a long valedictory letter to Marcus Aurelius, his future successor. The Emperor meditates on his past, describing his accession, military triumphs, love of poetry and music, and the philosophy that informed his powerful…


Book cover of The Wall: Rome's Greatest Frontier

Douglas Jackson Author Of Hero of Rome

From my list on Hadrian’s Wall and the soldiers who manned it.

Why am I passionate about this?

Douglas Jackson is the author of eleven historical novels, including the 9-book Valerius Verrens series, which involves his Hero of Rome in conspiracies, battles, and intrigues from the Boudiccan rebellion in 60AD to the battle of Mons Graupius in 84AD. His next book, appropriately titled The Wall, will be published in 2022. His first job when he left school at sixteen was helping to restore one of Julius Agricola’s marching camps in the Cheviot Hills. The Romans have fascinated him ever since, to the point where he's managed to make a living out of writing about them. With Hadrian’s Wall almost on his doorstep, there was never any doubt he'd set a book there.

Douglas' book list on Hadrian’s Wall and the soldiers who manned it

Douglas Jackson Why did Douglas love this book?

A non-fiction book with the same title as my novel, well why not? Alistair Moffat is an old friend and fellow Borderer who grew up not so far north of Hadrian’s Wall and has an abiding passion for history, language and place. What I love about The Wall is the way it manages to encompass the grand theme of the Romans in Britain and at the same time shine a spotlight on the fascinating minutiae of life in those ancient times. Thus we learn about the games the Roman soldiers played, the food they consumed and the building techniques they used to construct the Wall. Fair enough, you say, but … where else would we discover that the historian Suetonius, whose Life of the Twelve Caesars helped inform several of my earlier novels, was sacked by the Emperor Hadrian. That WH Auden wrote a poem called ‘Roman Wall Blues’. Or…

By Alistair Moffat,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Wall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Hadrian's Wall is the largest, most spectacular and one of the most enigmatic historical monument in Britain. Nothing else approaches its vast scale: a land wall running 73 miles from east to west and a sea wall stretching at least 26 miles down the Cumbrian coast. Many of its forts are as large as Britain's most formidable medieval castles, and the wide ditch dug to the south of the Wall, the vallum, is larger than any surviving prehistoric earthwork. Built in a ten-year period by more than 30,000 soldiers and labourers at the behest of an extraordinary emperor, the Wall…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Emperor Hadrian, the Middle Ages, and Europe?

Emperor Hadrian 16 books
The Middle Ages 429 books
Europe 952 books