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The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989
A butler looks back on a life of duty and wonders what it cost him.
Won the Booker Prize in 1989. Source: Wikipedia
Medium length, about 258 pages
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Memoirs of Hadrian
Marguerite Yourcenar, 1951
A Roman emperor, dying, writes to his successor Marcus Aurelius about his life.
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Stoner
John Williams, 1965
A quiet life of work and disappointment, told with great dignity.
Medium length, about 278 pages
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Gilead
Marilynne Robinson, 2004
An old preacher writes a long letter to his young son. Gentle and wise.
Medium length, about 256 pagesPulitzer Prize, 2005.
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The Leopard
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1958
A Sicilian prince watches his world end and meets it with grace.
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Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe, 1958
A proud man in an Igbo village, and the year everything around him starts to change.
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
A woman in Florida tells a friend about her three marriages and the life she chose.
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Pachinko
Min Jin Lee, 2017
Four generations of a Korean family making a life in Japan.
Finalist, National Book Award for Fiction, 2017.
How we pick. A person picks every book here, not an algorithm, and each one says why. No ads, affiliate links or paid placement.