Literary fiction books
Literary fiction books to start from. Open one to see books like it, or tell BookSense what you loved for four picks made for you.
New literary fiction books →Literary fiction gift ideas →Start here
New to the genre? These 5 are the books to read first.
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo IshiguroA study of emotional repression, self-deception, and changing social order through an unreliable narrator.
Beloved
Toni MorrisonExamines the psychological trauma of slavery using non-linear narrative and polyphonic perspectives.
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia WoolfA modernist milestone that maps interior consciousness, memory, and post-war grief over the course of a single day.
Things Fall Apart
Chinua AchebePortrays the complex social fabric of pre-colonial Igbo society and its collapse under British imperialism.
Disgrace
J. M. CoetzeeA sparse examination of power dynamics, aging, and moral accountability in post-apartheid South Africa.
Chosen and described with AI from our notes on the genre.
Subgenres
Schools and movements
- Existentialism
- Postmodernism
- Romanticism
- Realism
- Naturalism
- Symbolism
- Aestheticism and decadence
- Modernismo (Hispanic)
- Generation of '98
- Generation of '27
- Modernism
- Lost Generation
- Harlem Renaissance
- Bloomsbury Group
- Surrealism
- Négritude
- Beat Generation
- Magical realism
- Latin American Boom
- Oulipo and constrained writing
- Neorealism
- Postcolonial literature
- Autofiction
- Expressionism
- Dada
More literary fiction books
- Madame Bovary
Madame BovaryGustave Flaubert - Middlemarch
MiddlemarchGeorge Eliot - Invisible Man
Invisible ManRalph Ellison - White Teeth
White TeethZadie Smith - The Great Gatsby
The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald - Anna Karenina
Anna KareninaLeo Tolstoy - Americanah
AmericanahChimamanda Ngozi Adichie - To the Lighthouse
To the LighthouseVirginia Woolf - Never Let Me Go
Never Let Me GoKazuo Ishiguro - Pride and Prejudice
Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen1813 - We Were Never Meant To Be
We Were Never Meant To BePalle Vasu2025 - The Kite Runner
The Kite RunnerKhaled Hosseini2003
If you loved one of these
Tap a book you loved to see books like it.
- The Perks of Being a WallflowerBooks like The Perks of Being a Wallflower
- Of Mice and MenBooks like Of Mice and Men
- The Secret HistoryBooks like The Secret History
- Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (Monarch Notes) A CriticBooks like Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (Monarch Notes) A Critical Commentary
- The RoadBooks like The Road
- The helpBooks like The help
- The Complete Sherlock HolmesBooks like The Complete Sherlock Holmes