If you liked
Books like The God of Small Things
Loved The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from literary fiction, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.
10 books · ranked
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1
American Pastoral
The Swede — Newark's golden boy, a successful glove manufacturer — watches his perfect American life shatter when his daughter becomes a political bomber. Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel uses one man's ruination to examine the violence at the heart of the American Dream and the 1960s generation that detonated it.
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2
Enduring Love
Joe Rose and his partner Clarissa are enjoying a picnic when they witness a hot air balloon accident. In the aftermath, Joe is targeted by another witness — Jed Parry — who becomes obsessively convinced they share a bond. McEwan's novel pits scientific rationalism against faith, reason against obsession, and asks what happens when no one believes you about a real threat.
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3
Brokeback Mountain
Two young Wyoming ranch hands — Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist — herd sheep one summer on Brokeback Mountain and begin a sexual and emotional relationship that neither can acknowledge or abandon, meeting intermittently across two decades in a world that gives them no space for what they are to each other. Proulx's short story is one of the most celebrated pieces of American fiction of the late 20th century.
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4
The Subtle Knife
The second volume of His Dark Materials introduces Will Parry, a boy from our world, and the Subtle Knife — a blade that can cut between worlds. Will and Lyra meet in the city of Cittàgazze and begin to understand the full scale of what they are caught in. Pullman develops the trilogy's theological argument and its critique of authoritarian certainty.
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5
Alias Grace
In 1843, Grace Marks — a sixteen-year-old Irish immigrant servant — was convicted of the murder of her employer and his housekeeper in Upper Canada. A young psychiatrist, assigned to assess her, tries to reconstruct what actually happened. Atwood's novel examines how stories about women — their bodies, their madness, their guilt — are constructed and what they conceal.
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6
My Name Is Red
In 16th-century Istanbul, an illustrator is murdered — and the miniaturists in the Sultan's atelier must discover which of their number committed the crime while navigating the debate between Eastern and Western styles of representation. Pamuk's Booker International-shortlisted novel is both a detective story and a meditation on artistic identity, tradition and the politics of seeing. He won the Nobel Prize in 2006.
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7
About a Boy
Will Freeman, a wealthy, commitment-phobic 36-year-old who has never grown up, begins attending a single parents' support group to meet women. He meets Marcus, an awkward twelve-year-old whose mother is depressed, and the two form an unlikely relationship that changes both of them. Hornby's novel is about maturity, responsibility and the unexpected routes to both.
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8
Bridget Jones Diary
Bridget Jones, a thirty-something London singleton, keeps a diary of her calories, cigarettes, alcohol units and disastrous romantic encounters, including her boss Daniel Cleaver and the aloof Mark Darcy. Fielding's novel — a deliberate Austen retelling set in 1990s London — defined a new comedy of manners and spawned a cultural phenomenon that changed how women's commercial fiction was published and discussed.
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9
The Poisonwood Bible
Nathan Price, a Baptist minister consumed by guilt and religious fervour, moves his wife and four daughters from Georgia to the Belgian Congo in 1959 — and brings his certainties into a world that will destroy them. Told through the voices of the four daughters and their mother, Kingsolver's novel is about colonialism, religion and what it costs those who are forced to follow someone else's mission.
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10
High Fidelity
Rob Fleming, owner of a failing London record shop, is left by his girlfriend and spends the novel revisiting his five greatest romantic failures, making lists and wondering what is wrong with him. Hornby's comedy of male arrested development was one of the novels that helped define the 1990s confessional male voice.