Books like Station Eleven

01

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · Memoir

The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, one month before Plath's death.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

Normal People

Sally Rooney · Literary fiction

Normal People follows Connell and Marianne from their small-town Irish secondary school through their years at Trinity College Dublin.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

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.

04

The Castle

Franz Kafka · Literary fiction

K.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

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.

06

Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami · Literary fiction

Kafka on the Shore runs two parallel narratives that eventually, obliquely, converge.

Both dig into memory and loss.

07

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro · Literary fiction

Kathy H.

Both dig into memory and loss.

08

The Cherry Orchard

Anton Chekhov · Literary fiction

The Cherry Orchard is Chekhov's final play, first performed in Moscow in 1904, months before his death.

Both dig into memory and loss.

09

Doctor Zhivago

Boris Pasternak · Classics

Doctor Zhivago is the novel Boris Pasternak spent much of his adult life writing and which the Soviet state refused to publish, leading to its smuggled publication in Italian in 1957.

Both dig into art and survival.

10

Flowers for Algernon

Daniel Keyes · Science fiction

Flowers for Algernon is narrated through progress reports written by Charlie Gordon, a 32-year-old man with an intellectual disability who becomes the first human subject in an experimental surgery designed to dramatically increase intelligence.

Both dig into memory and loss.

11

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Alan Watts · Philosophy

The Book, published in 1966, is Alan Watts's most direct attempt to explain the central illusion he spent his career examining: the belief that each of us is a separate self, enclosed in skin, confronting an alien world.

Both dig into interconnection.

12

The Hidden Life of Trees

Peter Wohlleben · Science

Peter Wohlleben spent decades as a forester in the Eifel mountains of Germany, and The Hidden Life of Trees is his account of what scientific research and sustained observation have revealed about trees as social organisms.

Both dig into interconnection.