Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like Beautiful World, Where Are You
The best books like Beautiful World, Where Are You are A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and Memorial. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney is about fame and artistic labor, friendship and intimacy, late capitalism and meaning. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
01
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers · Memoir
Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
02
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong · Literary fiction
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is structured as a letter from a young Vietnamese-American man, Little Dog, to his illiterate mother — a letter she will never be able to read.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Memorial
03
Bryan Washington · Literary fiction
Memorial begins with a swap: Benson, a Black American childcare worker in Houston, and his Japanese boyfriend Mike are in a troubled relationship when Mike's estranged father calls from Japan — he is dying.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Educated: A Memoir
04
Tara Westover · Memoir
Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Just Kids
05
Patti Smith · Memoir
Just Kids is Patti Smith's National Book Award-winning memoir of her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, from their first meeting in New York in 1967 through their years of shared poverty, artistic development, and eventual celebrity, to Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS in 1989.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Farewell to Arms
06
Ernest Hemingway · Literary fiction
A Farewell to Arms is set during the First World War in northern Italy and follows Frederic Henry, an American serving as a lieutenant in the Italian ambulance corps, who falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Fine Balance
07
Rohinton Mistry · Literary fiction
A Fine Balance is set in an unnamed Indian city during Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–1977, a period of suspended democracy, forced sterilization, and slum clearances that is barely taught in the West and barely taught in India.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Little Life
08
Hanya Yanagihara · Literary fiction
A Little Life follows four men from college into middle age and beyond — Willem, an actor; JB, a painter; Malcolm, an architect; and Jude, a lawyer with a past that is revealed in increasingly devastating detail as the novel progresses.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
09
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · Literary fiction
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man traces the intellectual and spiritual development of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to the edge of adulthood, when he leaves Ireland to pursue life as an artist.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Thousand Acres
10
Jane Smiley · Literary fiction
A Thousand Acres retells King Lear on a thousand-acre Iowa farm in the 1970s.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Visit from the Goon Squad
11
Jennifer Egan · Literary fiction
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a novel told in thirteen chapters, each from a different point of view and sometimes in a radically different form — including one chapter composed entirely as a PowerPoint presentation.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
12
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain · Literary fiction
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins where Tom Sawyer left off — Huck Finn, the outcast son of the town drunk, has been taken in and given a respectable life he doesn't want.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like Beautiful World, Where Are You: quick answers
What are the best books like Beautiful World, Where Are You?
The best books like Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney are A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, Memorial by Bryan Washington, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, Just Kids by Patti Smith, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with Beautiful World, Where Are You, such as fame and artistic labor, friendship and intimacy, late capitalism and meaning.
What should I read after Beautiful World, Where Are You?
A natural next read after Beautiful World, Where Are You is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, Memorial by Bryan Washington, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover.
What books are similar to Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney?
Beautiful World, Where Are You centers on fame and artistic labor, friendship and intimacy, late capitalism and meaning. Books with a similar feel include A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, Memorial by Bryan Washington, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, Just Kids by Patti Smith, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
