Books like “One Hundred Years of Solitude”

What to read after “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse · 1927
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Philosophical”
A middle-aged loner who feels half man and half wolf drifts through a city he despises, until a chance encounter leads him to a strange magic theatre. There he confronts the many selves inside him. A novel about alienation, desire and finding one's way back to life.
2
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
Thirteen-year-old Jojo rides in the back of a truck as his mother drives across Mississippi to collect his white father from prison. The journey stirs up family history and two restless ghosts, drawing Jojo toward a harder understanding of his mother and his own name.
3
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Philosophical”
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.
4
Life of Pi
Yann Martel · 2001
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Philosophical”
- Magical Realism
- Philosophical
After a shipwreck, a teenage boy shares a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. For months he struggles to survive at sea while holding on to his beliefs and his story. A fable about faith, storytelling and the versions of events we choose to believe.
5
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold · 2002
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is murdered near her home and watches from her own heaven as her family and her killer's neighbours try to carry on. From that distance she follows her parents' grief, her sister growing up and a small town's slow reckoning with what happened.
6
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Leslye Walton · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
Born with wings she cannot fly, Ava grows up in a Seattle house where the women carry a long history of love that ends badly. As she longs to be an ordinary girl, her family's sorrows keep shaping everyone around her.
7
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.
8
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho · 1988
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Philosophical”
- Magical Realism
- Philosophical
Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd, dreams of treasure buried near the Egyptian pyramids and sets out across the desert to find it. Along the way strangers, omens and hardship teach him to read the world and to trust his own heart.
9
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan · 2018
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
After her mother's death, Leigh travels to Taiwan to meet grandparents she has never known, convinced her mother has returned as a red bird. Grief, a family silence and a friendship she left behind come together as she learns what she can and cannot hold on to.
10
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1958
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Rebellion
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.
11
A Monster Calls
Patrick Ness · 2011
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
Thirteen-year-old Conor is visited at night by a monster shaped like a yew tree, who promises to tell him three stories in exchange for a fourth, one Conor must tell himself. Meanwhile his mother is ill, and Conor struggles with grief, anger and guilt.
12
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · 1963
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
Esther Greenwood wins a magazine internship in New York, but the city and the pressure of her bright future leave her feeling hollow. Back home, her mind begins to slip and she is drawn toward a darkness she cannot name, even as she tries to recover.