Books like Night

01

The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank · Memoir

Anne Frank's diary, kept during the two years she spent hiding with her family in a concealed Amsterdam apartment, stands as one of the most widely read first-person accounts of the Holocaust.

Both dig into survival.

02

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl · Psychology

Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's account of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and the psychological theory he developed from that experience.

A kindred memoir read.

03

The Hiding Place

Corrie ten Boom · Memoir

Corrie ten Boom's memoir of her family's decision to hide Jewish people in their Haarlem home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and of the arrest, imprisonment, and concentration camp ordeal that followed, has been continuously in print since its 1971 publication and is one of the most widely read Christian testimonies of the twentieth century.

Shares survival and faith with Night.

04

The Liars' Club

Mary Karr · Memoir

Mary Karr's debut memoir about growing up in the oil-refinery town of Leechfield, Texas in the 1960s is widely credited with sparking the memoir boom of the 1990s.

Shares survival and memory with Night.

05

Gulag: A History

Anne Applebaum · History

Anne Applebaum's Gulag is the first comprehensive English-language history of the Soviet forced labor camp system, drawing on KGB archives opened briefly after 1991, survivor memoirs, and interviews with former prisoners and guards.

Shares survival and memory with Night.

06

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah · Memoir

Ishmael Beah was twelve years old when the Sierra Leone civil war reached his village and he was separated from his family.

Both dig into survival.

07

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.

08

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

Suleika Jaouad · Memoir

Suleika Jaouad was twenty-two and newly graduated, living in Paris with her first real job and a boyfriend, when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

Both dig into survival.

09

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah · Memoir

Born a Crime is Trevor Noah's memoir about growing up mixed-race in South Africa during the final years of apartheid and its chaotic aftermath.

Both dig into survival.

10

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan · Memoir

Brain on Fire is Susannah Cahalan's account of the month she spent in a New York hospital in 2009, during which she experienced psychosis, paranoia, violent behavior, catatonia, and seizures — and was nearly committed to a psychiatric facility before a doctor correctly diagnosed her with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a newly described autoimmune disease in which the body attacks the brain.

Both dig into memory.

11

Educated: A Memoir

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.

Both dig into memory.

12

Hunger

Roxane Gay · Memoir

Hunger is Roxane Gay's memoir about her body, the trauma that shaped it, and the world's persistent refusal to accommodate it.

Both dig into survival.