swap_horiz Doctor Faustus Alternatives

1

Stoner

John Williams’ *Stoner* chronicles the life of Edwin “Stoner” Grant, a Midwestern student at Midwestern State Teachers C...

1960S Literary Fiction Tragic Professorial

9.4 Excellent

2

Kokoro

Kokoro is a significant literary work by Natsume Soseki set in Japan’s Meiji Era. The novel centers on the evolving rela...

Literary Fiction 1910S Meiji Era Japanese University

9.1 Excellent

3

Possession: A Romance

A.S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning 1990 novel in which two British scholars uncover a secret Victorian love affair betwee...

Romance 1990S Literary Fiction UK University

8.8 Great

4

Fifth Business

Robertson Davies's 1970 novel, first in the Deptford trilogy, is narrated by a retired Canadian schoolmaster reflecting...

1970S Literary Fiction Professorial Robertson Davies

8.8 Great

5

A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving's 1989 novel set partly at a New Hampshire prep school and college, in which an extraordinary boy convinces...

Coming Of Age 1980S Literary Fiction Boarding School

8.7 Great

6

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai's 1948 semi-autobiographical Japanese novel tracing a young man's alienation, alcoholism, and moral collapse...

Coming Of Age Literary Fiction 1940S Japanese University

8.7 Great

7

Villette

Charlotte Brontë's 1853 novel drawing on her years as a teacher in Brussels, following an Englishwoman who forges an ind...

Coming Of Age Victorian Literary Fiction Bronte

8.6 Great

8

Sanshiro

Natsume Soseki's 1908 novel following a naive provincial youth who arrives at Tokyo Imperial University and is gradually...

Coming Of Age Literary Fiction Meiji Era Japanese University

8.6 Great

9

The Glass Bead Game

Hermann Hesse's 1943 German novel set in a future intellectual utopia called Castalia, for which Hesse was awarded the N...

Intellectual Literary Fiction 1940S Hesse

8.5 Great

10

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath's 1963 semi-autobiographical novel follows a young woman's mental breakdown, first published under the pseu...

Coming Of Age 1960S Literary Fiction Us College

8.5 Great

11

Steppenwolf

Hermann Hesse's 1927 novel following a middle-aged intellectual in crisis who perceives himself as divided between respe...

Philosophical Literary Fiction 1920S Hesse

8.5 Great

12

The Corrections

The Corrections is a 2001 novel by American author Jonathan Franzen that won the National Book Award and frequently util...

Family Drama 2000S Literary Fiction Us University Adjacent

8.5 Great

13

Sentimental Education

Gustave Flaubert's 1869 French novel following a young provincial student's romantic and political disillusionment acros...

19TH Century Coming Of Age Literary Fiction Paris Student

8.4 Great

14

Demian

Demian is a 1919 coming-of-age novel by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse that explores Jungian psychoanalytic themes an...

Coming Of Age Literary Fiction 1910S Hesse

8.4 Great

15

Mating

Norman Rush's 1991 National Book Award–winning novel narrated by an American female anthropologist in Botswana who journ...

Intellectual 1990S Literary Fiction Academic Fieldwork

7.8 Good

16

She Came to Stay

She Came to Stay is a 1943 existentialist novel by French author Simone de Beauvoir, exploring philosophical concepts of...

Literary Fiction 1940S French Intellectual Milieu Simone De Beauvoir

7.8 Good

17

The Cunning Man

Robertson Davies's 1994 novel, his last completed work, unfolds through a Toronto doctor's memoirs and examines the inte...

Intellectual 1990S Literary Fiction Robertson Davies

7.6 Good

18

A Word Child

Iris Murdoch's 1975 novel follows an Oxford-educated man, expelled from academia after a fatal scandal, now working as a...

Intellectual 1970S Literary Fiction Oxford Graduate

7.5 Good

19

The Light and the Dark

C.P. Snow's 1947 Strangers and Brothers novel portrays a brilliant, morally conflicted Cambridge classicist whose gifts...

Literary Fiction 1940S Cambridge Academic Milieu

7.4 Good

20

The Book and the Brotherhood

Iris Murdoch's 1987 novel following a group of Oxford graduates whose youthful pact to fund a radical colleague's book c...

Intellectual 1980S Literary Fiction Iris Murdoch

7.4 Good