Books like “Things Fall Apart”

What to read after “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “Things Fall Apart”

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1
Kristin Lavransdatter
Sigrid Undset · 1920
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
In fourteenth-century Norway the headstrong Kristin defies her devout father to marry the charming Erlend. Their life together brings seven sons, guilt and hardship as the world shifts around them and her early choices return to weigh on her.
2
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- 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.
3
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque · 1929
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
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.
4
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak · 2005
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- 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.
5
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
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
The Mad Women's Ball
Victoria Mas · 2019
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Rebellion
In 1885 Paris, women who defy their families can be locked away in the Salpetriere hospital. Eugenie, sent there by her father for hearing the dead, meets Genevieve, a senior nurse devoted to the famous doctor Charcot. Their bond grows as the hospital prepares its annual costume ball for the public.
7
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy · 1891
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Betrayal
Tess Durbeyfield, a poor country girl, is sent to wealthy relatives who share her family name. There she is wronged by a young man and later falls in love with Angel Clare, who knows nothing of her past. Society's judgement of her becomes the story's central cruelty.
8
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
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.
9
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- 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.
10
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Rebellion
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.
11
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
John le Carré · 1974
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
- Betrayal
After a mission fails, George Smiley is quietly brought back to find a Soviet mole inside British intelligence. Working from old files and a few wary colleagues, he sifts the careers of his former friends to discover which of them is the traitor.
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.