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After

Leave the World Behind

Rumaan Alam2020

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

Same tense register, still literary fiction

1 more ↓

  • Ghost Wall

    Sarah Moss2018

    A girl and her parents join a university reenactment of Iron Age life. Her father's obsession with historical authenticity turns dangerous.

    pace0·prose0·bleak+1

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Gravity's Rainbow

    Thomas Pynchon1973

    During the end of WWII, an American lieutenant's sexual encounters seem to predict where German V-2 rockets will fall. The narrative is fragmented.

    tense → sardonic

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

  • A Brief History of Seven Killings

    Marlon James2014

    A large cast of characters recounts the 1976 attempt on Bob Marley's life. The narrative spans decades and moves from Jamaica to New York.

    tense → propulsive

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • Briefing for a Descent into Hell

    Doris Lessing1971

    A man is found wandering London and placed in a psychiatric ward. The narrative shifts between the hospital and his internal cosmic hallucinations.

    tense → dreamlike

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

To recover

tense → playful

3 more ↓

  • The Spanish Love Deception

    Elena Armas2021

    A woman convinces a colleague she dislikes to fly to Spain and pose as her boyfriend for a wedding. They have four weeks to prepare the ruse.

    pace-1·prose-2·bleak-2

  • Can You Keep a Secret?

    Sophie Kinsella2003

    A woman confesses her deepest secrets to a stranger on a plane, only to discover he is her company's CEO. They navigate a workplace romance.

    pace0·prose-2·bleak-2

  • Mile High

    Liz Tomforde2023

    A professional hockey player and a flight attendant clash on the team's private plane during a season-long road trip.

    pace0·prose-2·bleak-2

Faster

3 more ↓

  • The Atlantis Plague

    A.G. Riddle2013

    A global pandemic triggers human evolution while a researcher and a secret agent hunt for a cure. It follows a race against a ticking clock.

    tense → propulsive, still apocalyptic

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak0

  • Child 44

    Tom Rob Smith2008

    A Soviet security officer investigates a serial killer in a state that officially claims murder does not exist.

    Same tense register

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

  • Candide

    Voltaire

    A naive young man travels the world while his tutor insists that everything is for the best. He encounters a series of global catastrophes.

    tense → sardonic

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Slower

3 more ↓

  • The English Patient

    Michael Ondaatje1992

    Four people shelter in a ruined Italian villa at the end of WWII. They care for a burned, anonymous man who recounts his past in the desert.

    tense → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose0·bleak0

  • Moby Dick

    Herman Melville1851

    A sailor joins a whaling voyage led by a captain seeking revenge on a specific whale. Large sections digress into the mechanics of 1850s whaling.

    tense → meditative, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

  • To the Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf1927

    A family and their guests visit a house in the Hebrides. The narrative follows their internal thoughts over two days separated by ten years.

    tense → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • A Distant Shore

    Caryl Phillips2003

    A retired teacher and an African refugee form a quiet bond in a xenophobic English village. Their past traumas emerge through alternating stories.

    tense → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

  • A Little Life

    Hanya Yanagihara2015

    Four friends in New York over thirty years. One of them is being destroyed, and the book does not look away.

    tense → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

  • The Nickel Boys

    Colson Whitehead2019

    A studious black teenager in 1960s Florida is sent to a brutal reform school where physical abuse is systemic.

    tense → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace0·prose0·bleak+1