Books like “The Remains of the Day”

What to read after “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Life After Life
Kate Atkinson · 2013
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Melancholic”
Ursula Todd is born in 1910 and dies, then is born again in the same English house. Over many lives she survives accidents, war and bad choices, and begins to sense that her repetitions might be leading somewhere.
2
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- War Fiction
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.
3
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak · 2005
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- War Fiction
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.
4
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque · 1929
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- War Fiction
Paul Baumer and his classmates enlist in the German army straight from school, urged on by a patriotic teacher. Trench life strips away everything they were taught, and the friends cling to each other as the war grinds them down.
5
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.
6
Atonement
Ian McEwan · 2001
Same genre: “Literary fiction” and “Historical fiction”
- War Fiction
- Unreliable Narrator
On one summer day in 1935, a girl misreads what she sees and tells a lie that destroys two lives. Years later, as war looms, she tries to understand and atone for what she did. A novel about memory, guilt and the stories we tell to survive.
7
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.
8
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 1869
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- War Fiction
Across the years of Napoleon's campaigns, the lives of several Russian families intertwine. Pierre searches for a purpose, Prince Andrei for glory and love, and Natasha grows up amid courtship and loss, while the war moves steadily toward the burning of Moscow.
9
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Unreliable Narrator
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.
10
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1958
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
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
Schindler's Ark
Thomas Keneally · 1982
Same genre: “Historical fiction”
- War Fiction
In German-occupied Poland, Oskar Schindler, a Czech businessman and opportunist, employs Jewish workers in his factory. As the war turns and deportations intensify, he uses his wealth and connections to shield them, at growing personal risk.
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.