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Recommendations based on Chronic Cityby Jonathan Lethem
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Motherless Brooklyn
by Jonathan Lethem
A detective investigates a powerful crime syndicate in New York City.
Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn’s very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in the most startling and original ways. ... (Goodreads)
The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
A young man's exploration of friendship, identity and belonging in a rapidly changing world.
From the prize-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn , a daring, riotous, sweeping novel that spins the tale of two friends and their adventures in late 20th-century America. This is the story of two ... (Goodreads)
Pastoralia
by George Saunders
Short stories exploring the complexities of modern life, through characters struggling to survive in an ever-changing world.
With this new collection, George Saunders takes us even further into the shocking, uproarious and oddly familiar landscape of his imagination. The stories in Pastoralia are set in a slightly skewed ... (Goodreads)
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A satirical exploration of human folly, exposing the dangers of unchecked science and technology.
Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ... Dr Felix Hoenikker, ... (Goodreads)
The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
A family drama exploring the complexities of relationships, aging and life’s choices.
The novel shifts back and forth through the late 20th century, intermittently following spouses Alfred and Enid Lambert as they raise their children Gary, Chip, and Denise in the traditional ... (Wikipedia)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
Two cousins create a comic book superhero and find success and adventure in 1940s New York.
The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City , where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin, Sammy Klayman. With the help of his ... (Wikipedia)
Tenth of December
by George Saunders
A collection of stories exploring the human condition through diverse characters and their struggles.
A young girl named Alison is kidnapped three days before her birthday. Kyle, a boy who lives nearby whose parents enforce very strict household rules, sees the event unfold and must decide whether to ... (Wikipedia)
Freedom
by Jonathan Franzen
A family saga revealing the struggles of a divided nation, and the power of love to heal.
The novel opens with a brief look at the Berglund family during their time living in St. Paul, Minnesota , from the perspective of their nosy neighbors. The Berglunds are portrayed as an ideal ... (Wikipedia)
Lincoln in the Bardo
by George Saunders
A spiritual exploration of death, exploring the afterlife through the eyes of President Lincoln.
In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by ... (Goodreads)
Lush Life
by Richard Price
A gripping crime mystery with a sprawling cast of characters, set in the heart of New York City.
" Price is the greatest writer of dialogue, living or dead, this country has ever produced. Wry, profane, hilarious, and tragic, sometimes in a single line, Lush Life is his masterwork. I doubt ... (Goodreads)
Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson
Epic tale of an American family's journey through the Vietnam War.
Johnson's novel revolves around the associations and interactions with Francis X. Sands, a retired Air Force colonel and war hero, now a CIA official in Southeast Asia. The story is told primarily ... (Wikipedia)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
by David Mitchell
An epic tale of love and adventure set in an 18th century Japanese trading port.
The novel begins in the summer of 1799 at the Dutch East India Company trading post Dejima in the harbor of Nagasaki . It tells the story of a Dutch trader's love for a Japanese midwife who is ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell
A dynamic narrative spanning centuries, exploring the interconnectedness of humanity.
The book consists of six nested stories; each is read or observed by a main character of the next, thus they progress in time through the central sixth story. The first five stories are each ... (Wikipedia)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
Leaving the Atocha Station
by Ben Lerner
A young poet's journey of self-discovery, struggling to find a sense of purpose in life.
Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. What is actual when ... (Goodreads)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal exploration of two separate yet interwoven realities.
The story is split between parallel narratives. The odd-numbered chapters take place in the 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland', although the phrase is not used anywhere in the text, only in page headers. The ... (Wikipedia)
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
A mosaic of characters, lives, and relationships as they intertwine and evolve over time.
Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. ... (Goodreads)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
Austerlitz
by W.G. Sebald
A man discovers his past and identity through the story of a Jewish boy who escaped Nazi Germany.
Jacques Austerlitz, the main character in the book, is an architectural historian who encounters and befriends the solitary narrator in Antwerp during the 1960s. Gradually we come to understand his ... (Wikipedia)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)
The Third Policeman
by Flann O'Brien
A bizarre yet darkly funny tale of a man's descent into a surreal world of mischievous creatures and strange events.
The Third Policeman is set in rural Ireland and is narrated by a dedicated amateur scholar of de Selby , a scientist and philosopher. , The narrator, whose name we never learn, is orphaned at a young ... (Wikipedia)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
by Philip K. Dick
A sci-fi exploration of the implications of reality-altering technology and the power of corporate greed.
The story begins in a future world where global temperatures have risen so high that in most of the world it is unsafe to be outside without special cooling gear during daylight hours. In a desperate ... (Wikipedia)
The Rings of Saturn
by W.G. Sebald
An exploration of the physical and metaphysical landscapes of the English coast.
The Rings of Saturn — with its curious archive of photographs — records a walking tour along the east coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is ... (Goodreads)
Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Surrealist exploration of addiction, delusions, and reality.
Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. The book begins with the ... (Wikipedia)
The Sisters Brothers
by Patrick deWitt
A unique western, following two brothers on a quest to find and murder a prospector.
In 1851, Eli and Charlie Sisters, a pair of assassins of minor repute, are hired by a wealthy businessman known only as "the Commodore" to travel from Oregon City to California in order to murder a ... (Wikipedia)
The Incredible Hulk: Planet Hulk
by Greg Pak
Hulk's journey to a strange, alien world, with a mission to save a people from oppressive forces.
When a Gamma bomb causes the Hulk to lose control and attack Las Vegas, , the Illuminati decide the Hulk is too dangerous to remain on Earth. , They trick him into entering orbit to destroy a rogue ... (Wikipedia)
A Scanner Darkly
by Philip K. Dick
A dystopian tale of surveillance and paranoia in a world of drug addiction.
The protagonist is Bob Arctor, member of a household of drug users, who is also living a double life as an undercover police agent assigned to spy on Arctor's household. Arctor shields his identity ... (Wikipedia)
Atonement
by Ian McEwan
A tale of the consequences of a child's mistake, and how its effects ripple through generations.
Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a talent for writing, lives at her family's country estate with her parents Jack and Emily Tallis. Her older sister Cecilia has recently graduated from ... (Wikipedia)
The Gone-Away World
by Nick Harkaway
A post-apocalyptic adventure filled with monsters, robots, and a search for hope.
The book is a science fiction epic with elements of comedy and nuclear holocaust fiction . It tells the story of the unnamed main character and his best friend Gonzo Lubitsch and their experiences ... (Wikipedia)
