Recommendations based on The Hearing Trumpetby Leonora Carrington

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. The Master and Margarita

    by Mikhail Bulgakov
    A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.

    The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)

  2. Invisible Cities

    by Italo Calvino
    A fantastical exploration of the cities of the imagination and the possibilities of life.

    "Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young ... (Goodreads)

  3. Ferdydurke

    by Witold Gombrowicz
    A man is magically regressed to adolescence, exploring the absurdities of adulthood.

    In this bitterly funny novel by the renowned Polish author Witold Gombrowicz. a writer finds himself tossed into a chaotic world of schoolboys by a diabolical professor who wishes to reduce him to ... (Goodreads)

  4. Bastard Out of Carolina

    by Dorothy Allison
    A young girl's coming of age amidst poverty, abuse, and a broken family.

    The book opens with Bone relating the details of her birth. Bone's 15-year-old mother Anney gives birth to her after being seriously injured in a car accident. Anney, who is comatose during the ... (Wikipedia)

  5. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

    by Italo Calvino
    An exploration of the nature of storytelling, as two readers attempt to uncover the lost story of the novel's title.

    If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration—"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to ... (Goodreads)

  6. Nightwood

    by Djuna Barnes
    A lyrical exploration of the human condition, examining the innermost depths of the soul.

    Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (TLS). That time is the period between the two World Wars, ... (Goodreads)

  7. The Castle

    by Franz Kafka
    Townspeople's surreal struggle against a mysterious ruling power.

    The protagonist, K., arrives in a village governed by a mysterious bureaucracy operating in a nearby castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he claims to be a land surveyor summoned by the ... (Wikipedia)

  8. The Chrysalids

    by John Wyndham
    A post-apocalyptic tale of survival and the struggle against oppressive forces.

    The inhabitants of post-apocalypse Labrador have vague knowledge of the "Old People", a technologically advanced civilization they believe was destroyed when God sent " Tribulation " to the world to ... (Wikipedia)

  9. We Have Always Lived in the Castle

    by Shirley Jackson
    A family isolated from society, struggling to cope with prejudice and tragedy.

    My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two ... (Goodreads)

  10. Cosmicomics

    by Italo Calvino
    A collection of stories that explore the mysteries of the universe, blending science and myth.

    Italo Calvino's extraordinary imagination and intelligence combine here in an enchanting series of stories about the evolution of the universe. He makes his characters out of mathematical formulae ... (Goodreads)

  11. Lirael

    by Garth Nix
    An orphan girl discovers her magical powers and embarks on a quest to save her kingdom.

    Lirael, the protagonist of the second and third books, is raised as a Clayr, part of a vast family of precognitive women who dwell in a remote glacier within the Old Kingdom. As she lacks the Clayr's ... (Wikipedia)

  12. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

    by Edwin A. Abbott
    A two-dimensional world and its inhabitants explore the concept of multidimensionality.

    The story describes a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures, whereof women are simple line-segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides. The narrator is a square , a ... (Wikipedia)

  13. Metamorphoses

    by Ovid
    A collection of tales of transformation, featuring gods and mortals.

    Prized through the ages for its splendor and its savage, sophisticated wit, The Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of Western culture–the first attempt to link all the Greek myths, before and after ... (Goodreads)

  14. Boy, Snow, Bird

    by Helen Oyeyemi
    A retelling of Snow White set in 1950s America, exploring themes of identity, race and family.

    Boy Novak, a young white girl, is born to an abusive father who works as an exterminator and whom she refers to as the rat catcher. In the winter of 1953, when she is twenty years old, Boy runs away ... (Wikipedia)

  15. The Woman in the Dunes

    by Kōbō Abe
    A man finds himself stuck in a remote village, struggling to escape a mysterious sand pit.

    In 1955, , Jumpei Niki, , a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a ... (Wikipedia)

  16. The Blind Assassin

    by Margaret Atwood
    A complex, interwoven story of family secrets, love, tragedy, and mystery.

    The novel's protagonist , Iris Chase, and her sister Laura, grow up well-off but motherless in a small town in southern Ontario. As an old woman, Iris recalls the events and relationships of her ... (Wikipedia)

  17. Gravity's Rainbow

    by Thomas Pynchon
    A surreal exploration of war and technology, and their impact on the human spirit.

    Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its ... (Goodreads)

  18. Pale Fire

    by Vladimir Nabokov
    A darkly comic and philosophical exploration of art, sanity, and the nature of reality.

    Shade's poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and ... (Wikipedia)

  19. The Magic Mountain

    by Thomas Mann
    A young man's journey of self-exploration and personal growth during a long stay at a Swiss sanatorium.

    The narrative opens in the decade before World War I . It introduces the protagonist, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family. Following the early death of his parents, Castorp has ... (Wikipedia)

  20. Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings

    by Jorge Luis Borges
    A collection of metaphysical tales and philosophical musings exploring the nature of reality.

    Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in ... (Goodreads)

  21. Mao II

    by Don DeLillo
    A novelist's search for inspiration and meaning in a chaotic world.

    A reclusive novelist named Bill Gray works endlessly on a novel which he chooses not to finish. He has chosen a lifestyle secluded from the outside world in order to try to keep his writing pure. He, ... (Wikipedia)

  22. The Day of the Locust

    by Nathanael West
    A study of the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the disappointments and struggles of the have-nots.

    Tod Hackett is the novel's protagonist. He moves from the east coast to Hollywood, California in search of inspiration for his next painting. The novel is set in the 1930s during the Great Depression ... (Wikipedia)

  23. Woman on the Edge of Time

    by Marge Piercy
    A woman is sent to the future to see the potential of a utopian society and how it can be achieved.

    In the 1970s, an impoverished but intelligent thirty-seven-year-old Mexican-American woman Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, a resident of Spanish Harlem , is unfairly incarcerated in a New York mental ... (Wikipedia)

  24. The Unbearable Lightness of Being

    by Milan Kundera
    A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.

    In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)

  25. Franz Kafka's The Castle

    by David Fishelson
    A man's struggle against an oppressive bureaucracy in a mysterious castle.

    The protagonist, K., arrives in a village governed by a mysterious bureaucracy operating in a nearby castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he claims to be a land surveyor summoned by the ... (Wikipedia)

  26. Confessions of a Mask

    by Yukio Mishima
    A young man's inner turmoil as he struggles to reconcile his true self with society's expectations.

    The protagonist is referred to in the story as Kochan, which is the diminutive of the author's real name: Kimitake. Being raised during Japan's era of right-wing militarism and Imperialism, he ... (Wikipedia)

  27. Illuminations

    by Arthur Rimbaud
    Collection of prose and poetry exploring the depths of the human experience.

    The prose poems of the great French Symbolist, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), have acquired enormous prestige among readers everywhere and have been a revolutionary influence on poetry in the twentieth ... (Goodreads)

  28. Ceremony

    by Leslie Marmon Silko
    A young Native American man's healing journey, reclaiming cultural roots and identity.

    Ceremony follows a half- Pueblo , half-white man named Tayo after his return from World War II . His white doctors say he is suffering from "battle fatigue," which would be called post-traumatic ... (Wikipedia)

  29. Under the Skin

    by Michel Faber
    A mysterious woman's journey of self-exploration and recognition of her own humanity.

    The novel begins with Isserley picking up hitchhikers. Gradually, it is revealed she is an alien, originally somewhat canine in form, who has been surgically altered to look like a human woman, thus ... (Wikipedia)

  30. Their Eyes Were Watching God

    by Zora Neale Hurston
    A woman's journey of self-discovery, liberation and empowerment.

    Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person – no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three ... (Goodreads)