Here are 100 books that The Unbearable Lightness of Being fans have personally recommended if you like
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
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Too often, I find that novelists force the endings of their books in ways that aren’t true to their characters, the stories, or their settings. Often, they do so to provide the Hollywood ending that many readers crave. That always leaves me cold. I love novels whose characters are complex, human, and believable and interact with their setting and the story in ways that do not stretch credulity. This is how I try to approach my own writing and was foremost in my mind as I set out to write my own book.
While John Le Carre wrote many fine books, with some unforgettable classics at his peak, this novel was a revelation.
In this short book, he captures the character of the wonderfully crusty, dissatisfied Leamas, the interdependence of love and betrayal, the frustration and interminable waiting of spying, and the moral bankruptcy essential to pursuing higher objectives.
But for me, the perfect ending, devastating and true to both the character and the Cold War Berlin setting, makes this book memorable.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager, now a television series starring Tom Hiddleston.
The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carre's career worldwide
In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse-a desk job-Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered…
I’ve been drawn to thought-provoking novels from my early days as a reader, and especially later when my own work took shape. My books tend to deal with life’s big topics––love, loss, creativity, self-discovery, aging, forgiveness, what it means to be a good man, and the climate crisis––so I tend to gravitate to ambitious novels focused on how we humans might evolve in a healthy way. My characters do have flaws, many of them, but in the end, they are resilient and figure out a way to take a step forward. All of the books I mentioned are similar in scope and approach.
The Moviegoer was the first novel I read which had little plot and a great deal of meaning. Basically, it’s about one man’s search for meaning in a world which values shallowness and consumerism above all else. It’s as relevant today as it was when written and the prose is amazing!
Winner of the 1962 National Book Award and one of Time magazine’s 100 Best English-Language Novels, Walker Percy’s debut The Moviegoer is an American masterpiece and a classic of Southern literature. Insightful, romantic, and humorous, it is the story of a young man’s search for meaning amid a shallow consumerist landscape.
Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker, fills his days with movies and casual sex. His life offers him nothing worth retaining; what he treasures are scenes from The Third Man or Stagecoach, not the personal experiences he knows other people hold dear. On the cusp of turning thirty,…
I have always been interested in people—specifically exploring what makes us human from different angles and often different disciplines. Overtime, this has taken the shape of writing novels, studying biological anthropology, psychology, and medicine, and sometimes even just people watching. My novels have explored topics such as nonsuicidal self-injury, the pains of growing up, and growing up multicultural. I am currently pursuing a PhD in Psychology.
Dr. Irvin Yalom is a writer and clinical practitioner who is beloved by many in the field of mental health and therapy. I, like many, admire the way in which he tackles the most difficult human dilemmas through intimate stories highlighting the universality of many of these topics. It was difficult for me to pick which of Dr. Yalom’s books to recommend, as I have thoroughly enjoyed each one I’ve read. However, The Schopenhauer Cureis particularly about confronting mortality—the realization of the ephemerality of life and the limitations and acceptance of what we can achieve. Through Dr. Yalom’s adroit depictions of Philip Slate and Julius Hertzfeld, we see the blurred edges of philosophy and psychology, where some of our most basic questions may best be addressed by the melding of the two.
From the internationally bestselling author of Love's Executioner and When Nietzsche Wept, comes a novel of group therapy with a cast of memorably wounded characters struggling to heal pain and change lives
Suddenly confronted with his own mortality after a routine checkup, eminent psychotherapist Julius Hertzfeld is forced to reexamine his life and work -- and seeks out Philip Slate, a sex addict whom he failed to help some twenty years earlier. Yet Philip claims to be cured -- miraculously transformed by the pessimistic teachings of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer -- and is, himself, a philosophical counselor in training.
I readTinker Tailor Soldier Spyfor the first time many years ago, while traveling aboard a Canadian National Railway train from Montreal to British Columbia. Something about the contrast between the majestic Canadian Rockies and the dark alleys of John Le Carré’s Berlin brought the Cold War fully to life and set me on the path to writing a novel of my own set during that time. (Living through some of those tense years of superpower stand-offs didn’t hurt.) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spyis told in third-person, but many Cold War novels written in the first person do a masterful job of evoking that troubled era.
John Banville is a famously prolific author, but his 1997 novel, The Untouchable, is unique in that it’s based on a real-life figure.
Anthony Blunt—who would later be exposed as one of the notorious Cambridge spies—rose to become an art expert to the Queen, even as he funneled purloined secrets to the highest reaches of the Kremlin.
In The Untouchable, we follow Blunt’s fictional counterpart, Victor Maskell, from his poor Irish upbringing and conversion to Marxism at Cambridge, to his efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union well into the Cold War.
Victor’s first-person account—a miracle of authorly ventriloquism for a character bordering on the sociopathic—is rendered in Banville’s silky prose, a pure delight to read. For me, The Untouchable is a novel for the ages.
'The Untouchable is an engrossing, exquisitely written and almost bewilderingly smart book . . . It's the fullest book I've read in a very long time, utterly accomplished, thoroughly readable, written by a novelist of vast talent' Richard Ford
Victor Maskell has been betrayed. After the announcement in the Commons and the hasty revelation of his double life of wartime espionage, his disgrace is public, his knighthood revoked, his position as curator of the Queen's pictures terminated. There are questions to be answered. For whom has he been sacrificed? To what has he sacrificed his life?
I’m a child of the Cold War. Until the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989 this strange standoff between the Soviet Union and the Western allies informed everyone’s life, but my own case was particular because my father served in the Royal Air Force. For three years he was even in command of three squadrons of nuclear bombers. With a background like that, how could I not be interested in the larger picture? Since then I have gone on to write novels with all kinds of settings but the other side of the now defunct Iron Curtain has always held a fascination... and has directly led to at least three of my own books.
Is there a Czech theme going on here? Well, the Czech lands have always produced artists, musicians and writers of the highest calibre and although he may not be widely known, Škvorecký is one of them. From exile in Canada following the Russian invasion of 1968, he wrote this extraordinary and fantastic novel about a miracle (a holy statue is seen to bow its head) in a Czech village in the first year of communist rule. Of course such irrational things couldn’t be allowed and the priest is condemned as a hoaxer. But now we’re in 1968 and everything is up for discussion including this forgotten event. Seen through the eyes of the author’s picaresque character, Danny Smiřický (who was present at the original miracle but unfortunately had dozed off at the vital moment so never actually saw St Joseph move), the whole story is relived and discussed. Part farce,…
This energetic and hilarious novel is made even more important by the current final thawing of the long, Communist winter in Czechoslovakia. Moving between 1948, when our hero Danny Smiricky falls asleep in church while a miraculous event occurs, and 1968, when he observes the miracle of Prague Spring, The Miracle Game is a sharp look at the strange, sad, and silly things people do to survive.
I’m a child of the Cold War. Until the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989 this strange standoff between the Soviet Union and the Western allies informed everyone’s life, but my own case was particular because my father served in the Royal Air Force. For three years he was even in command of three squadrons of nuclear bombers. With a background like that, how could I not be interested in the larger picture? Since then I have gone on to write novels with all kinds of settings but the other side of the now defunct Iron Curtain has always held a fascination... and has directly led to at least three of my own books.
Svetlana Alliluyeva was Josef Stalin’s daughter. In 1967 she fled to the West bringing this memoir with her. It was published to universal acclaim in the same year. An epistolary memoir it gives remarkable insight into her life growing up in the Kremlin. Haunting, at times lyrical, always affecting, she shows Stalin as something other than the monster we take him to be. She makes no excuses for him but it is salutary to see him portrayed as a father and a human being. An antidote to the all-too-easy dismissal of him as ‘a monster’.
In this riveting, New York Times-bestselling memoir—first published by Harper in 1967—Svetlana Alliluyeva, subject of Rosemary Sullivan’s critically acclaimed biography, Stalin’s Daughter, describes the surreal experience of growing up in the Kremlin in the shadow of her father, Joseph Stalin.
Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva, later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, his second wife. In 1967, she fled the Soviet Union for India, where she approached the U.S. Embassy for asylum. Once there, she showed her CIA handler something remarkable: A personal memoir about growing up inside the Kremlin that…
I am a fourth-generation Asian New Zealander who always felt ‘other’ growing up. When I was little, I hated being asked ‘where are you from?’ because I wanted to be seen as ‘just’ a New Zealander. This frustration shaped a lot of my race and identity journey, and I started reading books about other people’s personal experiences because it made me feel seen. These books also helped me recognize the richness and humanity behind my family’s story. I hope this beautiful list of books will resonate with your experiences or give you insight into a new corner of the world.
Ocean Vuong writes in a poetic prose that transforms memories into fragments that linger in your mind. His choice to write this book as fictionalized letters to his mother was deeply beautiful and heart-wrenching. This is a book that took me on a journey through the Vietnam War, my first queer experiences, and the journey of finding out what it means to become American.
Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction!
Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more.
"A lyrical work of self-discovery that's shockingly intimate and insistently…
Rick Shenkman is a New York Times bestselling author, historian, and journalist who, after reading and writing history books for 40 years, decided to spend the past decade discovering what social scientists have to say. To his great joy, he learned that since he had last studied their work in college they had come to a vast new understanding of human political behavior. He now uses their insights into political psychology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and genetics to help explain our fucked up politics.
This is a highly readable and fun book published back in 1982 by one of the leading primatologists of our era.A close student of ape behavior, Frans de Waal shows how smart apes are and what we can learn about ourselves by studying their behavior.He demonstrates that, contrary to common belief, it is not by physical strength alone that an alpha ape hangs onto its power at the top of the social pyramid. More important than their muscles is their ability to form coalitions with others.
If your mental image of an alpha ape is a brawny male, forget it.De Waal profiles one female ape, Mama, who manages for years to dominate a group by exercising power more prudently than her male rivals, who shriek and throw tantrums when they don't get their way. This is the good news.The bad news is that apes are Machiavellian.…
The first edition of Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics was acclaimed not only by primatologists for its scientific achievement but also by politicians, business leaders, and social psychologists for its remarkable insights into the most basic human needs and behaviors. Twenty-five years later, this book is considered a classic. Featuring a new preface that includes recent insights from the author, this anniversary edition is a detailed and thoroughly engrossing account of rivalries and coalitions-actions governed by intelligence rather than instinct. As we watch the chimpanzees of Arnhem behave in ways we recognize from Machiavelli (and from the nightly news), de…
A dozen years ago, my family moved from a homogeneous community where everyone looked, lived, and believed as we did to a vibrant neighborhood filled with difference and complexity. This shifted something deep inside me and ultimately changed the way I see the world and myself within it. It set me on a path toward understanding how authentic, ordinary community holds the power to transform our world. To live as neighbors is to draw near to each other. I have written three books on this central theme and plan to spend the rest of my life reaching for empathy as our best tool in reclaiming the goodness of humanity.
The unexpected cover art was just the beginning of the odyssey that is this book. Abdurraquib masterfully explores the intersection of civics and pop culture, weaving personal history with modern-day ethics, all to a soundtrack that is both memorable and urgent.
This is the sort of book that unlocks a hidden door to our collective compassion. One of the best things I’ve ever read.
* 2018 "12 best books to give this holiday season" —TODAY (Elizabeth Acevedo) * A "Best Book of 2017" —Rolling Stone (2018), NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily * American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads' * Midwest Indie Bestseller
In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of…
I lived and worked in South Korea for four years, where I first became fascinated with the country’s history, from shamans on Jeju island to the twentieth-century politics of Seoul. I’m the author of two novels and dozens of short stories and essays published in venues around the world, many of which feature some element of Korean history. I’m originally from Canada and now teach creative writing at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
This is a novel that I suspected I was falling into as much as reading—that is, I felt utterly and, at times, uncomfortably immersed in Murakami’s story universe.
I love the blending of contemporary realism in the novel (our protagonist’s day-to-day life) with the historical and the way the Japanese military’s atrocities in Manchuria in the 30s haunt the recognizably contemporary world so that even a man sitting at the bottom of a well contemplating existence and history feels like an acceptable and dreamlike weirdness.
I’m completely taken with such a strange and affecting representation of lesser-known histories and the ghosts such events leave us with.
Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.
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