Books like “Catch-22”

What to read after “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1969
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
- War Fiction
Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain's assistant and prisoner of war in Dresden, becomes unstuck in time, living his life out of order among moments in the war and on another planet. His flat, looping account turns a firebombing and a life's small cruelties into a dark joke about fate.
2
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata · 2016
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
Keiko has worked at the same Tokyo convenience store for eighteen years and is content there, until the people around her begin pressuring her to want a normal life. Deadpan and sharp, the novel follows her attempt to perform the life others expect, by staging a relationship she does not want.
3
Schindler's Ark
Thomas Keneally · 1982
Similar setting: “War Fiction”
In German-occupied Poland, Oskar Schindler, a Czech businessman and opportunist, employs Jewish workers in his factory. As the war turns and deportations intensify, he uses his wealth and connections to shield them, at growing personal risk.
4
The Prince and the Pauper
Mark Twain · 1881
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
On the same day in Tudor London a beggar boy and the heir to the English throne meet and find they look identical. They trade clothes as a joke, and the swap turns real, so each must survive a life he was never taught to live. A tale of switched places, misrule and what a crown is really worth.
5
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr · 2014
Same genre: “War novel”
- War Fiction
- Survival
During the German occupation of France, a blind girl and her father flee Paris for the walled city of Saint-Malo, carrying a valuable jewel. In Germany, an orphan with a gift for radio repairs is drawn into the war machine. Their separate paths move slowly toward the same besieged town in August 1944.
6
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain · 1884
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
A boy fleeing his abusive father and a man escaping slavery travel together down the Mississippi on a raft. Their friendship grows as they meet swindlers and feuds along the way, and Huck must decide what he believes. A comic, humane adventure about freedom and conscience.
7
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol · 1842
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
- Morally Grey Character
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.
8
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert · 1856
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
- Morally Grey Character
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.
9
The Poisoned Chocolates Case
Anthony Berkeley · 1929
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
A box of poisoned chocolates kills a man at his club, and the police can find no culprit. Six members of the Crimes Circle, an armchair detective society, each offer a different solution to the same murder, until amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham tests their theories against the facts.
10
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque · 1929
Same genre: “War novel”
- War Fiction
- Survival
Paul Baumer and his classmates enlist in the German army straight from school, urged on by a patriotic teacher. Trench life strips away everything they were taught, and the friends cling to each other as the war grinds them down.
11
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017
Similar setting: “War Fiction”
- War Fiction
- Survival
A young woman in colonial Korea, Sunja, leaves home for Japan with a husband she barely knows and raises a family that lives as outsiders for generations. Through war and poverty, the household holds on to its dignity and its secrets.
12
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson · 1992
Similar atmosphere: “Satire”
- Satire
- Morally Grey Character
In a future Los Angeles split between franchised city-states, a hacker and a teenage skateboard courier chase a drug that works on both computers and human minds. The trail runs from the neon Metaverse to ancient languages and a plan to reshape civilisation.