Books like “Life After Life”

What to read after “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “Life After Life”

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1
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Claire North · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Time Loop
- Philosophical
Harry August dies and is born again in the same English country house in 1919, remembering everything. Each life draws him into a hidden network of people who live their years over and over, until another of their kind begins to unravel time itself and asks him to stop it.
2
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
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.
3
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- War Fiction
Mariam and Laila, born a generation apart in Afghanistan, are forced together by marriage to the same violent man. Through decades of war and loss, the two women become each other's only home and take great risks for the chance of a different life.
4
Replay
Ken Grimwood · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and wakes in 1963 in his eighteen-year-old body, with every memory of the years ahead intact. He lives that span over and over, each replay starting later, and slowly realises he is not the only one caught in the loop.
5
All You Need Is Kill
Hiroshi Sakurazaka · 2004
From the same world: “Time Loop”
- Time Loop
- War Fiction
A young soldier is thrown into a war against alien Mimics and killed on his first day of battle, then wakes on the morning before, again and again. Each death teaches him something, and he must relive the same fight until he can survive long enough to find a way out.
6
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak · 2005
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
Narrated by Death, the story follows Liesel Meminger, a girl sent to live with a foster family in Nazi Germany. She steals books, shares them with a Jewish man hiding in the basement, and grows up amid bombs, loss and small acts of kindness.
7
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
- Philosophical
- Melancholic
Stuck between life and death, Nora Seed finds a library whose shelves hold all the lives she might have lived if she had chosen differently. She tries them one by one, measuring her regrets against what she actually wants from being alive.
8
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
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.
9
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Stuart Turton · 2018
From the same world: “Time Loop”
- Time Loop
At Blackheath, Evelyn Hardcastle is shot dead at a party every night, and Aidan Bishop wakes each morning in a different guest's body with no memory of who he is. To escape, he must use each host to find the killer, while other players want the same thing.
10
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr · 2014
Same genre: “Historical fiction” and “Literary fiction”
- War Fiction
- Coming of Age
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.
11
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.
12
A Thousand Ships
Natalie Haynes · 2019
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- War Fiction
The Trojan War told through its women: queens, captives, mothers and goddesses who wait, grieve and endure while the men fight and die. From the Greek camp to the burning city, their voices answer the old story that left them out.