Books like “Steppenwolf”

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

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1
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Philosophical”
The Buendía family founds the town of Macondo and repeats its own history across seven generations, through civil wars, doomed loves and strange miracles. A manuscript of prophecies waits all the while to reveal how their story ends.
2
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Outcast Hero
Expelled from prep school and drifting through New York before going home, teenager Holden Caulfield narrates a few days of restless encounters. He rails against adults he calls phonies while quietly grieving a brother and his own place in the world.
3
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.
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
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “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.
6
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.
7
Earth Abides
George R. Stewart · 1949
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
- Philosophical
- Melancholic
A plague kills nearly everyone on Earth. An ecologist emerges from the mountains to find empty cities and a few survivors, and spends the rest of his life watching a new, smaller society take shape without the old world's machinery.
8
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.
9
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.
10
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Toshikazu Kawaguchi · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Melancholic”
- Magical Realism
- Melancholic
In a small Tokyo cafe, one seat lets a visitor travel to the past. There are rules: you cannot change the present, you must not leave the seat, and you must return before the coffee goes cold. Four customers sit down, each hoping to say what was left unsaid.
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
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
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.