Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like The Remains of the Day
The best books like The Remains of the Day are A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, The Year of Magical Thinking, and Man's Search for Meaning. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is about repression and self-deception, duty and dignity, lost love. 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.
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
01
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.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Year of Magical Thinking
02
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.
Read the summary → - Man's Search for Meaning
03
Viktor E. Frankl · Psychology
Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's account of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and the psychological theory he developed from that experience.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Between the World and Me
04
Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir
Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
05
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
Stephen Grosz · Psychology
The Examined Life is a collection of short psychoanalytic case studies drawn from Stephen Grosz's 25 years of practice as a psychoanalyst in London.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Under the Volcano
06
Malcolm Lowry · Literary fiction
Malcolm Lowry's 1947 novel takes place on a single day — the Mexican Day of the Dead, November 2, 1938 — in the small town of Quauhnahuac (Cuernavaca) in the shadow of the Popocatépetl volcano.
Both dig into lost love.
Read the summary → - Annihilation
07
Jeff VanderMeer · Science fiction
A team of four unnamed women — the biologist, the anthropologist, the surveyor, and the psychologist — enter Area X, a forbidden coastal wilderness where something has gone wrong for decades.
Both dig into memory and unreliability.
Read the summary → - A Farewell to Arms
08
Ernest Hemingway · Literary fiction
A Farewell to Arms is set during the First World War in northern Italy and follows Frederic Henry, an American serving as a lieutenant in the Italian ambulance corps, who falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Fine Balance
09
Rohinton Mistry · Literary fiction
A Fine Balance is set in an unnamed Indian city during Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–1977, a period of suspended democracy, forced sterilization, and slum clearances that is barely taught in the West and barely taught in India.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Little Life
10
Hanya Yanagihara · Literary fiction
A Little Life follows four men from college into middle age and beyond — Willem, an actor; JB, a painter; Malcolm, an architect; and Jude, a lawyer with a past that is revealed in increasingly devastating detail as the novel progresses.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
11
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · Literary fiction
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man traces the intellectual and spiritual development of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to the edge of adulthood, when he leaves Ireland to pursue life as an artist.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Thousand Acres
12
Jane Smiley · Literary fiction
A Thousand Acres retells King Lear on a thousand-acre Iowa farm in the 1970s.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like The Remains of the Day: quick answers
What are the best books like The Remains of the Day?
The best books like The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro are A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Remains of the Day, such as repression and self-deception, duty and dignity, lost love.
What should I read after The Remains of the Day?
A natural next read after The Remains of the Day is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
What books are similar to The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro?
The Remains of the Day centers on repression and self-deception, duty and dignity, lost love. Books with a similar feel include A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
