Books like “Heart of Darkness”

What to read after “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “Heart of Darkness”

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1
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Forbidden Knowledge
A brilliant scholar, dissatisfied with everything he can learn, makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles for a taste of true experience. What follows leads him to love, ruin and the limits of human striving. A verse tragedy about knowledge, temptation and the soul.
2
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway · 1952
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
An aging Cuban fisherman, Santiago, has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. When a huge marlin finally takes his line far out to sea, he must hold on through a long, painful contest of endurance and will.
3
The Daughter of Time
Josephine Tey · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Laid up in hospital with a broken leg, Inspector Alan Grant is bored until he is given a portrait of Richard III. Wondering whether the king really murdered the princes in the Tower, he reopens a five-hundred-year-old case from his bed, working only from books.
4
Lord of the Flies
William Golding · 1954
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
A group of schoolboys survives a plane crash on a deserted island and tries to govern themselves. Order slips first into fear and then into savagery as the boys turn on one another. An allegory about civilisation, violence and what people become without rules.
5
Anthem
Ayn Rand · 1938
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Forbidden Knowledge
In a future run by the collective, the word I has no meaning and all work is done for the good of all. Equality 7-2521 breaks the rules by doing forbidden research and falling in love, then flees a society that cannot allow an individual to exist.
6
Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke · 1953
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Giant alien ships appear above Earth's cities and impose a peaceful rule under the Overlords. Decades of calm and progress pass, but humanity's golden age hides a purpose no one can guess until the Overlords finally reveal themselves.
7
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells · 1895
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
An inventor builds a machine that carries him far into the future. He finds a gentle people living above ground and a sinister race below, and slowly learns what became of humanity. A short, influential tale of time travel and a dark vision of the end.
8
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · 1851
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Quest
A wandering sailor joins the whaling ship Pequod, whose captain is obsessed with hunting the white whale that took his leg. As the voyage stretches across the oceans, the crew is dragged toward a reckoning. A vast, digressive novel of obsession, the sea and human nature.
9
The Sea-Wolf
Jack London · 1904
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Morally Grey Character
A literary critic survives a ferry collision in San Francisco Bay and is picked up by a sealing schooner commanded by Wolf Larsen, a brutal and brilliant captain. Thrown into the crew's rough life, the soft scholar must find his footing under a man who answers to no law but his own.
10
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Unreliable Narrator
Stevens, a butler at an English country house, sets out on a motoring trip in 1956 and looks back over decades of service. Recalling his employer's political misjudgements and his own missed chances with the housekeeper, he begins to see what a life given to duty has cost him.
11
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Morally Grey Character
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.
12
The Trial
Franz Kafka · 1925
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
A clerk is arrested one morning and told he is on trial, though no one will say for what. As he tries to navigate a faceless legal system, his ordinary life unravels. A bleak, darkly funny novel about bureaucracy, guilt and power.