Books like “The Alchemist”

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

About “The Alchemist”

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1
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.
2
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse · 1927
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Philosophical”
- Magical Realism
- 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.
3
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Philosophical”
- Magical Realism
- 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.
4
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.
5
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism” and “Philosophical”
- Magical Realism
- 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.
6
Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts · 2003
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
An escaped Australian convict flees to Bombay under a false name and disappears into the city's hidden world. He runs a clinic in a slum, is drawn into the orbit of a mafia boss and a guarded woman, and is remade by betrayal, imprisonment and war.
7
A Monster Calls
Patrick Ness · 2011
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
- Coming of Age
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.
8
The Sea-Wolf
Jack London · 1904
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
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.
9
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold · 2002
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
- Coming of Age
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.
10
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.
11
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad · 1899
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Quest
A sailor tells of his journey up an African river to reach a mysterious ivory trader who has become a god to the locals. The deeper he goes, the more he sees of greed and cruelty, and of what people become when no one restrains them. A short, unsettling classic.
12
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan · 2018
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
- Coming of Age
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.