Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like Villette
The best books like Villette are Homage to Catalonia, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Villette by Charlotte Brontë is about repression and interiority, female independence, grief and displacement. 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.
- Homage to Catalonia
01
George Orwell · Memoir
Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's firsthand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, which he joined in late 1936 as a volunteer with the POUM militia — a Trotskyist revolutionary organization that was later suppressed by the Soviet-backed Stalinist wing of the Republican forces.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
02
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 → - Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
03
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Azar Nafisi · Memoir
Azar Nafisi spent years teaching literature at universities in Tehran before the restrictions on what she could teach — and who she could teach — became intolerable.
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 → - A Is for Alibi
05
Sue Grafton · Mystery
Kinsey Millhone is a private investigator in Santa Teresa, California — Grafton's fictionalized Santa Barbara — recently divorced for the second time and living alone in a small apartment she describes with genuine affection.
Both dig into female independence.
Read the summary → - Pride and Prejudice
06
Jane Austen · Classics
Pride and Prejudice opens with one of the most famous sentences in English literature and immediately establishes its ironic mode: a truth universally acknowledged turns out to be a social pressure universally imposed.
Both dig into female independence.
Read the summary → - A Farewell to Arms
07
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
08
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
09
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
10
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
11
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 → - A Visit from the Goon Squad
12
Jennifer Egan · Literary fiction
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a novel told in thirteen chapters, each from a different point of view and sometimes in a radically different form — including one chapter composed entirely as a PowerPoint presentation.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like Villette: quick answers
What are the best books like Villette?
The best books like Villette by Charlotte Brontë are Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, A Is for Alibi by Sue Grafton, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with Villette, such as repression and interiority, female independence, grief and displacement.
What should I read after Villette?
A natural next read after Villette is Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
What books are similar to Villette by Charlotte Brontë?
Villette centers on repression and interiority, female independence, grief and displacement. Books with a similar feel include Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, A Is for Alibi by Sue Grafton, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
