Historical fiction · Similar reads
Books like The Blue Flower
The best books like The Blue Flower are The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby, and Siddhartha. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald is about romantic idealism, love and reality, the romantic movement. 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 Sun Also Rises
01
Ernest Hemingway · Literary fiction
The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's first novel, published in 1926, and it remains the sharpest portrait of the "Lost Generation" — the young Americans and British expatriates who drifted through Paris and Spain in the years after World War I, drinking heavily and searching for something they couldn't name.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Great Gatsby
02
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 historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Siddhartha
03
Hermann Hesse · Religion & Spirituality
Siddhartha is Hermann Hesse's 1922 novel of spiritual seeking, written at a time when Hesse was deeply studying Buddhist and Hindu texts.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - War and Peace
04
Leo Tolstoy · Literary fiction
War and Peace follows five aristocratic Russian families across fifteen years of Napoleonic war and peace, from the drawing rooms of St.
A kindred historical fiction 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 romantic idealism.
Read the summary → - A Gentleman in Moscow
06
Amor Towles · Historical fiction
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal — not to death, but to permanent house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Tale of Two Cities
07
Charles Dickens · Historical fiction
A Tale of Two Cities is set against the French Revolution and follows three intertwined characters: Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who has renounced his title and family legacy; Lucie Manette, the daughter of a man who spent eighteen years imprisoned in the Bastille; and Sydney Carton, a dissolute English lawyer who loves Lucie without hope and knows he will never be the man Darnay already is.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Thousand Splendid Suns
08
Khaled Hosseini · Historical fiction
A Thousand Splendid Suns follows two Afghan women across nearly forty years of their country's turbulence: Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy merchant who is married off at fifteen to a much older man in Kabul, and Laila, a young woman from a different generation whose family is destroyed in a rocket strike during the civil war and who is subsequently forced into the same household.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Alias Grace
09
Margaret Atwood · Historical fiction
Alias Grace is based on the historical case of Grace Marks, a young Irish immigrant servant who was convicted in 1843, along with stable hand James McDermott, of the murders of her employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Upper Canada.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - All the Light We Cannot See
10
Anthony Doerr · Historical fiction
All the Light We Cannot See follows two children through the Second World War on a collision course neither can see coming.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Babel
11
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.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Bring Up the Bodies
12
Hilary Mantel · Historical fiction
Bring Up the Bodies is the second novel in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, picking up where Wolf Hall ended: Anne Boleyn is Queen, Henry VIII is restless, and Thomas Cromwell is the indispensable minister who keeps the machinery of the court running.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like The Blue Flower: quick answers
What are the best books like The Blue Flower?
The best books like The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald are The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Blue Flower, such as romantic idealism, love and reality, the romantic movement.
What should I read after The Blue Flower?
A natural next read after The Blue Flower is The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. A kindred historical fiction read. Other strong choices are The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
What books are similar to The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald?
The Blue Flower centers on romantic idealism, love and reality, the romantic movement. Books with a similar feel include The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
