Books like The Inheritance Games

01

The Great Gatsby

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.

Both dig into class and wealth.

02

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote · Memoir

Truman Capote's account of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas — and of the investigation, capture, trial, and execution of the killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock — is the founding document of the true crime genre and one of the most admired works of American nonfiction of the twentieth century.

A kindred mystery read.

03

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.

Both dig into identity.

04

The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri · Literary fiction

The Namesake follows the Ganguli family across three decades, beginning with Ashoke and Ashima's arranged marriage and their immigration from Calcutta to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and extending into the American adulthood of their son, Gogol.

Both dig into identity.

05

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.

Shares identity and belonging with The Inheritance Games.

06

Crying in H Mart

Michelle Zauner · Memoir

Crying in H Mart is Michelle Zauner's memoir of her mother's death from cancer and the loss it made her confront: not just of a parent but of the Korean half of her identity.

Shares identity and belonging with The Inheritance Games.

07

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Barack Obama · Memoir

Barack Obama wrote Dreams from My Father in 1995, before entering politics, after being elected the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Shares identity and belonging with The Inheritance Games.

08

Out of Africa

Isak Dinesen · Memoir

Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of the seventeen years she spent running a coffee farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi, from 1914 to 1931.

Shares identity and belonging with The Inheritance Games.

09

Small Fry

Lisa Brennan-Jobs · Memoir

Small Fry is Lisa Brennan-Jobs's memoir of growing up as the daughter Steve Jobs long refused to acknowledge.

Shares class and wealth and identity with The Inheritance Games.

10

The Tender Bar: A Memoir

J. R. Moehringer · Memoir

The Tender Bar is J.

Shares identity and belonging with The Inheritance Games.

11

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · Memoir

Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.

Both dig into identity.

12

Adult Children of Alcoholics

Janet G. Woititz · Psychology

Adult Children of Alcoholics is Janet Woititz's clinical guide to the lasting psychological patterns that develop in children raised in alcoholic families.

Both dig into identity.