Classics · Similar reads
Books like The Sorrows of Young Werther
The best books like The Sorrows of Young Werther are Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and The Bell Jar. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is about unrequited love, romantic idealism, nature and feeling. 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.
- Siddhartha
01
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 classics read.
Read the summary → - Steppenwolf
02
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 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.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - When Nietzsche Wept
04
Irvin D. Yalom · Philosophy
When Nietzsche Wept is a philosophical novel by psychiatrist Irvin Yalom set in Vienna in 1882.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Tender Is the Night
05
F. Scott Fitzgerald · Classics
Tender Is the Night follows Dick Diver, a brilliant American psychiatrist, and his wife Nicole — a former patient he married — as they host and dazzle a circle of wealthy expatriates on the French Riviera in the 1920s.
Both dig into self-destruction.
Read the summary → - Freedom
06
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 → - The Basketball Diaries
07
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 Blue Flower
08
Penelope Fitzgerald · Historical fiction
The Blue Flower is a novel about the German Romantic poet Novalis — born Friedrich von Hardenberg — and specifically about his inexplicable, passionate attachment to a twelve-year-old girl, Sophie von Kühn, whom he met when he was twenty-two and who died of tuberculosis at fifteen before he could marry her.
Both dig into romantic idealism.
Read the summary → - The Snowman
09
Jo Nesbø · Thriller
Detective Harry Hole of the Oslo Police is drawn to a series of disappearances connected by one detail: a snowman appears outside each woman's home before she vanishes.
Both dig into self-destruction.
Read the summary → - Bleak House
10
Charles Dickens · Classics
Bleak House is organized around the interminable Chancery case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce — a legal dispute over a will that has been grinding through the Court of Chancery for decades, consuming the fortunes and lives of everyone attached to it.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Candide
11
Voltaire · Classics
Candide is a young man raised in a Westphalian castle on the philosophy of his tutor Pangloss: that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - David Copperfield
12
Charles Dickens · Classics
David Copperfield is the novel Dickens called his "favourite child" — a first-person bildungsroman that tracks David from a motherless childhood in Suffolk through blacking-factory misery (barely disguised autobiography), education, early work in London, two marriages, and eventual literary success.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary →
Books like The Sorrows of Young Werther: quick answers
What are the best books like The Sorrows of Young Werther?
The best books like The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom, Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Sorrows of Young Werther, such as unrequited love, romantic idealism, nature and feeling.
What should I read after The Sorrows of Young Werther?
A natural next read after The Sorrows of Young Werther is Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. A kindred classics read. Other strong choices are Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom.
What books are similar to The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?
The Sorrows of Young Werther centers on unrequited love, romantic idealism, nature and feeling. Books with a similar feel include Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom, Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
