Books like The Cherry Orchard

01

Steppenwolf

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 literary fiction read.

02

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.

03

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien · Memoir

Tim O'Brien served as a foot soldier in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion · Memoir

Joan Didion's account of the year following the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, is the most rigorous and unflinching memoir of grief in American literature.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

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.

06

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro · Literary fiction

Kathy H.

Both dig into memory and loss.

07

Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel · Literary fiction

Station Eleven begins with an actor dying of a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear in Toronto.

Both dig into memory and loss.

08

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.

09

Letters from a Stoic

Seneca · Philosophy

Letters from a Stoic collects a selection of 124 letters that Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius in the final years of his life, around 65 AD.

Both dig into time.

10

On the Shortness of Life

Seneca · Philosophy

On the Shortness of Life is a moral essay by the Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, written around 49 CE and addressed to his father-in-law Paulinus.

Both dig into time.

11

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

Brigid Schulte · Self-help

Overwhelmed is Washington Post journalist Brigid Schulte's investigation into why so many people — particularly women with children — feel perpetually time-starved in an era when labor-saving technology is more abundant than at any point in history.

Both dig into time.

12

Sculpting in Time

Andrei Tarkovsky · Philosophy

Sculpting in Time is Andrei Tarkovsky's account of his own filmmaking philosophy, assembled from lectures and writings over the final decade of his life and published in Russian in 1986, the year he died.

Both dig into time.