Books like Love in the Time of Cholera

01

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez · Literary fiction

One Hundred Years of Solitude chronicles the founding, flourishing, and eventual obliteration of Macondo, a fictional Colombian town, through six generations of the Buendía family.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho · Religion & Spirituality

The Alchemist is a Brazilian novel first published in 1988 and translated into 80 languages, making it one of the most translated books in history.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

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.

Both dig into memory.

04

A Grief Observed

C. S. Lewis · Memoir

A Grief Observed is C.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

Pale Rider

Laura Spinney · History

Pale Rider is Laura Spinney's account of the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic, with a distinctive emphasis on its global dimensions and on why the event so largely disappeared from collective memory.

Shares mortality and memory with Love in the Time of Cholera.

06

Gilead

Marilynne Robinson · Literary fiction

Gilead is written as a long letter from John Ames, a 76-year-old Congregationalist minister in Iowa, to his seven-year-old son — a letter the boy will not read until he is grown and his father is long dead.

Both dig into mortality.

07

In Search of Lost Time

Marcel Proust · Literary fiction

In Search of Lost Time is a seven-volume novel published between 1913 and 1927 in which the unnamed narrator, looking back from late middle age, attempts to recover a life that has slipped away.

Both dig into memory.

08

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami · Literary fiction

Norwegian Wood is Murakami's most straightforwardly realist novel and his most personal — a coming-of-age story set in late 1960s Tokyo, narrated by Toru Watanabe, who is recalling the year he was nineteen and the two women who shaped him.

Both dig into memory.

09

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Díaz · Literary fiction

Oscar Wao is an overweight Dominican American nerd from New Jersey who wants nothing more than to find love and write fantasy novels.

Both dig into love and obsession.

10

The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje · Literary fiction

The English Patient is set at the end of the Second World War, in a damaged Italian villa north of Florence.

Both dig into love and obsession.

11

A Mind for Numbers

Barbara Oakley · Self-help

A Mind for Numbers is Barbara Oakley's guide to learning hard subjects effectively, written primarily for students struggling with mathematics and science but drawing on cognitive science principles that apply to any demanding field.

Both dig into memory.

12

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Atul Gawande · Health

Being Mortal is Atul Gawande's investigation into why modern medicine is so bad at helping people die well.

Both dig into mortality.