Books like War and Peace

01

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque · History

All Quiet on the Western Front follows Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier who enlists with his classmates during the First World War after being swept up in patriotic speeches.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

The Gulag Archipelago

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · History

The Gulag Archipelago is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's monumental account of the Soviet forced-labor camp system.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

Man's Search for Meaning

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.

04

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.

05

Firefly Lane

Kristin Hannah · Contemporary fiction

Tully Hart and Kate Mularkey meet in the summer of 1974 as fourteen-year-olds on Firefly Lane in rural Washington State, and their friendship spans three decades — through high school, college, careers in television journalism, marriages, and heartbreak.

Both dig into love and marriage.

06

Iron Flame

Rebecca Yarros · Fantasy

Iron Flame picks up in the immediate aftermath of Fourth Wing's reveal, with Violet Sorrengail now knowing what the war is actually about and what her mother has been hiding.

Both dig into war and its costs.

07

The Blade Itself

Joe Abercrombie · Fantasy

The Blade Itself is the first book of the First Law trilogy, a grimdark fantasy that opened with a deliberate challenge to the genre's conventions: the barbarian is not particularly heroic, the noble knight is not particularly noble, and the crippled torturer employed by the Inquisition is probably the most interesting person in the room.

Both dig into war and its costs.

08

A Farewell to Arms

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.

09

A Fine Balance

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.

10

A Little Life

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.

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.

12

A Thousand Acres

Jane Smiley · Literary fiction

A Thousand Acres retells King Lear on a thousand-acre Iowa farm in the 1970s.

A kindred literary fiction read.