Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like Crudo
The best books like Crudo are The Year of Magical Thinking, A Moveable Feast, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Crudo by Olivia Laing is about anxiety and dread, marriage and commitment, political crisis. 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.
- The Year of Magical Thinking
01
Joan Didion · Memoir
Joan Didion's account of the year following the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, is the most rigorous and unflinching memoir of grief in American literature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Moveable Feast
02
Ernest Hemingway · Memoir
A Moveable Feast is Hemingway's posthumously published account of his years in Paris during the 1920s, when he and his first wife Hadley lived cheaply in Montparnasse while he apprenticed himself to the work of becoming a writer.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
03
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 →
- A Farewell to Arms
04
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
05
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
06
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
07
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
08
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
09
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
10
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 → - American Pastoral
11
Philip Roth · Literary fiction
American Pastoral opens with a narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, learning at a high school reunion about the life and death of Seymour "the Swede" Levov — a man who embodied postwar American success so completely he seemed almost allegorical.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Americanah
12
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · Literary fiction
Americanah follows Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman who leaves Lagos for America as a university student and spends fifteen years navigating a country that insists on categorizing her in ways Nigeria never did.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like Crudo: quick answers
What are the best books like Crudo?
The best books like Crudo by Olivia Laing are The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with Crudo, such as anxiety and dread, marriage and commitment, political crisis.
What should I read after Crudo?
A natural next read after Crudo is The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.
What books are similar to Crudo by Olivia Laing?
Crudo centers on anxiety and dread, marriage and commitment, political crisis. Books with a similar feel include The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
