Recommendations based on Sobre héroes y tumbasby Ernesto Sabato

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

  1. Cronopios and Famas

    by Julio Cortázar
    A surrealist collection of short stories, exploring the absurdities of the world.

    "The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions ... (Goodreads)

  2. Steppenwolf

    by Hermann Hesse
    The inner struggles of a tortured soul as he searches for redemption.

    The book is presented as a manuscript written by its protagonist , a middle-aged man named Harry Haller, who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. The acquaintance adds a ... (Wikipedia)

  3. The Savage Detectives

    by Roberto Bolaño
    A poetic journey of two young poets searching for a mysterious figure through Latin America.

    The novel is narrated in first person by several narrators and divided into three parts. The first section , "Mexicans Lost in Mexico", set in late 1975, is told by 17-year-old aspiring poet, Juan ... (Wikipedia)

  4. Chronicle of a Death Foretold

    by Gabriel García Márquez
    A murder mystery narrated by the townspeople and tracing the events leading up to the crime.

    The non-linear story, told by an anonymous narrator, begins with the morning of Santiago Nasar's death. The reader learns that Santiago lives with his mother, Placida Linero; the cook, Victoria ... (Wikipedia)

  5. Pedro Páramo

    by Juan Rulfo
    A man returns to his hometown in search of his father, discovering the ghostly inhabitants.

    A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village. As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another ... (Goodreads)

  6. Ficciones

    by Jorge Luis Borges
    A collection of short stories exploring the limits of the imagination.

    The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his ... (Goodreads)

  7. Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    A collection of four works exploring the human psyche, morality, and existentialism through the lens of Russian society.

    The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg . He is contemplating the ridiculousness of his own life, and his recent realization that nothing matters to him any more. It ... (Wikipedia)

  8. Hopscotch

    by Julio Cortázar
    A surrealist journey of self-exploration and imaginative play.

    Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club." A child's death and La ... (Goodreads)

  9. The Aleph and Other Stories

    by Jorge Luis Borges
    A collection of stories featuring metaphysical and philosophical explorations of the human condition.

    Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an ... (Goodreads)

  10. Notes from Underground

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    A portrait of the struggles of a troubled man, exploring his inner turmoil.

    The novel is divided into two parts. Serving as an introduction into the mind of the narrator, the first part of Notes from Underground is split into nine chapters: The narrator observes that utopian ... (Wikipedia)

  11. The Invention of Morel

    by Adolfo Bioy Casares
    An escaped convict finds refuge on a deserted island, where he discovers a strange and mysterious phenomenon.

    The fugitive starts a diary after tourists arrive on the desert island where he is hiding. , Although he considers their presence a miracle, he is afraid they will turn him in to the authorities. He ... (Wikipedia)

  12. Don Quixote

    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
    An aging knight's adventures and misadventures, filled with chivalry, honor, and satire.

    Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in ... (Goodreads)

  13. The Complete Stories and Poems

    by Edgar Allan Poe
    A collection of dark and mysterious stories and poems, exploring the depths of the human condition.

    This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary ... (Barnes & Noble)

  14. 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)

  15. The Wall

    by Jean-Paul Sartre
    A soldier's fight for survival in a World War II concentration camp.

    'The Wall', the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor–seemingly there for the men's ... (Goodreads)

  16. 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)

  17. The Brothers Karamazov

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.

    The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)

  18. The Bridge on the Drina

    by Ivo Andrić
    A multigenerational epic of a small Bosnian town and the bridge that stands as its symbol.

    A vivid depiction of the suffering history has imposed upon the people of Bosnia from the late sixteenth century to the beginning of World War I, The Bridge on the Drina earned Ivo Andric the Nobel ... (Goodreads)

  19. Women

    by Charles Bukowski
    A collection of stories exploring the lives of various women and their relationships with men.

    Women focuses on the many dissatisfactions Chinaski faced with each new woman he encountered. One of the women featured in the book is a character named Lydia Vance; she is based on Bukowski's ... (Wikipedia)

  20. Baltasar and Blimunda

    by José Saramago
    A forbidden love story set against the backdrop of 1700s Portugal and its Inquisition.

    From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a “brilliant...enchanting novel” (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in eighteenth-century Portugal at ... (Goodreads)

  21. 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)

  22. The Book of Disquiet

    by Fernando Pessoa
    A collection of philosophical reflections on life, love and fate.

    Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology, and horoscope. When he died in ... (Goodreads)

  23. Journey to the End of the Night

    by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
    A darkly comic, nihilistic journey of self-discovery, following a man into the heart of an absurd world.

    Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper-realistic, boiling over with black humor Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper realistic—boils over with bitter humor and revulsion at ... (Barnes & Noble)

  24. The Reader

    by Bernhard Schlink
    A man's journey of understanding, uncovering a dark secret from his past.

    Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of ... (Goodreads)

  25. The Sound and the Fury

    by William Faulkner
    Tragic story of the decline of a southern family, exploring the human condition.

    The first section of the novel is narrated by Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a source of shame to the family due to his diminished mental capacity; the only characters who show genuine care for him are ... (Wikipedia)

  26. Tender Is the Night

    by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    A young couple's tumultuous journey through love, wealth and tragedy.

    Dick and Nicole Diver are a glamorous couple who rent a villa in the South of France and surround themselves with a circle of friends, mainly Americans. Also staying at the nearby resort are Rosemary ... (Wikipedia)

  27. The Cave

    by José Saramago
    A group of cave-dwellers uncover a secret that threatens their way of life.

    José Saramago is a master at pacing. Readers unfamiliar with the work of this Portuguese Nobel Prize winner would do well to begin with The Cave , a novel of ideas, shaded with suspense. Spare and ... (Goodreads)

  28. The Sorrows of Young Werther

    by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    A young man's struggle to reconcile his intense emotions with the realities of society.

    This is Goethe's first novel, published in 1774. Written in diary form, it tells the tale of an unhappy, passionate young man hopelessly in love with Charlotte, the wife of a friend - a man who he ... (Goodreads)

  29. Stoner

    by John Williams
    An academic's life of quiet desperation, finding solace in literature.

    William Stoner is born on a small farm in 1891. After high school, the county agent advises he go to agriculture school. Stoner enrolls in the University of Missouri , where all agriculture students ... (Wikipedia)

  30. Everyman

    by Philip Roth
    A man's life story told through his relationships, questioning the meaning of life and mortality.

    The book begins at the funeral of its protagonist. The remainder of the book, which ends with his death, looks mournfully back on episodes from his life, including his childhood, where he and his ... (Wikipedia)