Books like “Anna Karenina”

What to read after “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol · 1842
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Russian Empire
- Satire
Chichikov arrives in a provincial Russian town and charms its officials and landowners. He has come to buy serfs who have died but are still listed on the tax rolls, and his odd scheme draws him into the vanity and corruption of the society around him.
2
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert · 1856
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Melancholic”
A country doctor's wife dreams of romance and a grander life than her dull provincial marriage offers. She takes lovers and spends beyond her means, chasing a happiness that keeps slipping away. A sharply observed novel about desire, debt and disillusion.
3
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy · 1891
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
Tess Durbeyfield, a poor country girl, is sent to wealthy relatives who share her family name. There she is wronged by a young man and later falls in love with Angel Clare, who knows nothing of her past. Society's judgement of her becomes the story's central cruelty.
4
A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov · 1840
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
Pechorin is a clever, restless officer serving in the Caucasus, bored by everything and unable to value what he wins. In five linked tales he manipulates the people drawn to him, a princess, a smuggler, an old comrade, and coolly explains his own cruelty. A portrait of a gifted man who has nothing left to want.
5
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
- Philosophical
- Melancholic
A poor student in St Petersburg, convinced that great men stand above the law, murders a pawnbroker and her sister. What follows is less a chase than a slow unravelling, as guilt, a detective's needling and a young woman's faith close in on him.
6
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 1869
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
Across the years of Napoleon's campaigns, the lives of several Russian families intertwine. Pierre searches for a purpose, Prince Andrei for glory and love, and Natasha grows up amid courtship and loss, while the war moves steadily toward the burning of Moscow.
7
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Star-Crossed Lovers
Janie Crawford tells her friend the story of her life: three marriages, a long search for love and independence, and the storm that changes everything. Set in the Black towns and farms of Florida, the novel follows her from a silent girl to a woman who speaks for herself.
8
The Fault in Our Stars
John Green · 2012
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
Hazel Grace, a teenager with terminal cancer, meets Augustus Waters at a support group. Their cautious romance grows through shared wit and a planned trip to Amsterdam, while both confront what they can and cannot control.
9
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 1920
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
Newland Archer is engaged to May Welland in old New York society when May's cousin, the Countess Olenska, returns from Europe after leaving her husband. Newland and the Countess are drawn to each other, but the rules of their world demand that he marry May and hide what he feels.
10
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1924
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Philosophical”
In the glass city of OneState, citizens live by a strict timetable and are known only by numbers. When the mathematician D-503 begins to keep a private journal, a woman named I-330 draws him into a movement that wants to tear down the walls of the ordered world.
11
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1958
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
Okonkwo, a respected wrestler and farmer in a Nigerian village, builds his standing on a fear of appearing weak. When he is exiled and, years later, British missionaries and officials arrive, the customs that shaped him begin to collapse around him and his people.
12
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 1932
Similar atmosphere: “Satire” and “Philosophical”
- Satire
- Philosophical
In a future where citizens are engineered for contentment and kept calm with a drug called soma, Bernard Marx and the Savage John discover the cost of a stable, pleasure-driven society. John's arrival from a reservation exposes the emptiness behind the World State's comfort.