Books like Heart of Darkness

01

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque · History

All Quiet on the Western Front follows Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier who enlists with his classmates during the First World War after being swept up in patriotic speeches.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell · Memoir

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's firsthand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, which he joined in late 1936 as a volunteer with the POUM militia — a Trotskyist revolutionary organization that was later suppressed by the Soviet-backed Stalinist wing of the Republican forces.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad · Literary fiction

Jim is a young British officer on a decrepit steamship carrying hundreds of Muslim pilgrims when, in a moment of crisis he cannot fully explain even to himself, he jumps overboard and abandons them.

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

A Moveable Feast

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.

05

The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes · Literary fiction

The Sense of an Ending is a short novel in two parts.

Both dig into complicity.

06

A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine · Science fiction

Mahit Dzmare, ambassador from a small, semi-independent mining station to the vast Teixcalaanli Empire, arrives at the capital to find her predecessor has died under suspicious circumstances and the neural implant that was supposed to give her access to his memories and knowledge is three years out of date.

Both dig into complicity.

07

Babel

R.F. Kuang · Historical fiction

Set in an alternate 1830s Oxford, Babel imagines a Royal Institute of Translation at the heart of the British Empire — a place where silver bars engraved with translation "match-words" generate the industrial magic that powers British supremacy.

Both dig into complicity.

08

Poverty, by America

Matthew Desmond · Economics

Poverty, by America is Matthew Desmond's follow-up to Evicted, and it makes a more explicit and polemical argument: poverty in the United States is not a natural condition or a problem of insufficient resources.

Both dig into complicity.

09

The Player of Games

Iain M. Banks · Science fiction

Jernau Gurgeh is the greatest game player in the Culture — an interstellar post-scarcity civilization governed by benevolent AIs called Minds.

Both dig into complicity.

10

Verity

Colleen Hoover · Thriller

Lowen Ashby is a struggling author hired to ghostwrite the remaining books in bestselling thriller writer Verity Crawford's series, while Verity recovers from a traumatic brain injury.

Both dig into complicity.

11

A Farewell to Arms

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.

12

A Fine Balance

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.