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After

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mohsin Hamid2007

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

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  • Honor

    Thrity Umrigar2022

    An Indian-American journalist returns to India to cover a court case involving a woman attacked for marrying a Muslim man.

    Same tense register, still literary fiction

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • As I Lay Dying

    William Faulkner1915

    The Bundren family travels by wagon to bury their matriarch. Fifteen different narrators describe the journey as the corpse decomposes.

    tense → sardonic, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • Don Quixote

    Kathy Acker1986

    A woman undergoes an abortion and adopts the persona of Don Quixote to pursue a quest in a fragmented, postmodern landscape.

    tense → sardonic

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

    Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

    tense → bleak, still political fiction

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

To recover

tense → playful

3 more ↓

  • 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-1·bleak-2

  • Behind the Net

    Stephanie Archer2024

    A former musician becomes the live-in assistant for a professional hockey goalie she knew in high school.

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • She Went All the Way

    Meg Cabot2002

    A screenwriter and an actor survive a helicopter crash in the Alaskan wilderness and must hike to safety while being pursued by a killer.

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

Faster

3 more ↓

  • 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·prose0·bleak-1

  • The Da Vinci Code

    Dan Brown2003

    A symbologist and a cryptologist flee the police while solving puzzles hidden in art. They search for a secret regarding the Holy Grail.

    tense → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

    A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.

    tense → wry

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

Slower

3 more ↓

  • Orbital

    Samantha Harvey2024

    Six astronauts orbit Earth over twenty-four hours. The narrative focuses on their routine tasks and observations of the planet below.

    tense → meditative, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak-1

  • Blackouts

    Justin Torres2023

    A young man cares for a dying elder in a medical facility. They use a 1930s study on homosexuality to reconstruct their personal histories.

    tense → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

  • The Waters of Kronos

    Conrad Richter1960

    An elderly man travels back in time to his childhood Pennsylvania town, which in his present day is submerged beneath a reservoir.

    tense → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak-1

Heavier

Same tense register, still literary fiction

3 more ↓

  • A Bend in the River

    V. S. Naipaul1979

    An Indian shopkeeper moves to a newly independent African nation. He observes the town's slow descent into chaos under a cult-of-personality leader.

    tense → cold, still political fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • Girls Burn Brighter

    Shobha Rao2018

    Two girls in India are separated by a brutal act of violence. They endure trafficking and labor across continents to find each other.

    tense → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • The story of a brief marriage

    Anuk Arudpragasam2016

    Two refugees enter an arranged marriage in a Sri Lankan camp during the final days of the civil war. It focuses on the physical details of survival.

    tense → meditative, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak+1