Classics · Similar reads
Books like Tender Is the Night
The best books like Tender Is the Night are The Great Gatsby, A Moveable Feast, and The Bell Jar. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald is about decline and dissolution, mental illness, class and expatriate life. 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 Great Gatsby
01
F. Scott Fitzgerald · Classics
The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner who moves to Long Island in the summer of 1922 and finds himself adjacent to the fabulous, mysterious parties of his neighbor Jay Gatsby.
A kindred classics 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 classics read.
Read the summary → - The Bell Jar
03
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.
Both dig into mental illness.
Read the summary → - Steppenwolf
04
Hermann Hesse · Philosophy
Steppenwolf is Hermann Hesse's most psychologically intense and formally inventive novel, published in 1927 at a time of personal crisis.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - The Sorrows of Young Werther
05
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · Classics
The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary novel — told almost entirely in letters from the protagonist to his friend Wilhelm — about a young man of artistic sensibility who falls devastatingly in love with a woman already promised to another.
Both dig into self-destruction.
Read the summary → - A Beautiful Mind
06
Sylvia Nasar · Biography
Sylvia Nasar's biography of the mathematician John Nash — Nobel laureate, game theory pioneer, and paranoid schizophrenic — is one of the finest accounts of genius and mental illness in biographical literature.
Both dig into mental illness.
Read the summary → - Anatomy of an Epidemic
07
Robert Whitaker · Health
Anatomy of an Epidemic is Robert Whitaker's investigation into a paradox: as the use of psychiatric medication in the United States has increased dramatically over the past half-century, the number of people on disability due to mental illness has risen in parallel.
Both dig into mental illness.
Read the summary → - Brain Energy
08
Christopher M. Palmer · Health
Brain Energy is Christopher Palmer's argument that mental illness is fundamentally a metabolic disorder — specifically, a disorder of mitochondrial function and brain energy regulation.
Both dig into mental illness.
Read the summary → - Freedom
09
Jonathan Franzen · Literary fiction
Walter and Patty Berglund are the kind of liberal couple that makes their neighbors slightly uncomfortable — too earnest, too visibly trying, their St.
Both dig into self-destruction.
Read the summary → - Norwegian Wood
10
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 mental illness.
Read the summary → - The Basketball Diaries
11
Jim Carroll · Memoir
The Basketball Diaries is Jim Carroll's account of his teenage years in New York City during the late 1960s, drawn from journals he kept between ages thirteen and sixteen.
Both dig into self-destruction.
Read the summary → - The Marriage Plot
12
Jeffrey Eugenides · Literary fiction
Madeleine Hanna graduates from Brown University in 1982 and is in love with two very different men: Leonard Bankhead, brilliant and bipolar, and Mitchell Grammaticus, a religious studies major searching for something larger than himself.
Both dig into mental illness.
Read the summary →
Books like Tender Is the Night: quick answers
What are the best books like Tender Is the Night?
The best books like Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald are The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with Tender Is the Night, such as decline and dissolution, mental illness, class and expatriate life.
What should I read after Tender Is the Night?
A natural next read after Tender Is the Night is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A kindred classics read. Other strong choices are A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.
What books are similar to Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald?
Tender Is the Night centers on decline and dissolution, mental illness, class and expatriate life. Books with a similar feel include The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
