swap_horiz The Adolescent Alternatives

1

Père Goriot

Père Goriot is a significant 19th-century French bildungsroman by Honoré Balzac. The novel follows Eugène de Rastignac’s...

French 19TH Century Ambition Social Class

9.1 Excellent

2

Ceremony

1977 novel by Leslie Marmon Silko, often cited as the first novel published by a Native American woman, about a Laguna P...

20TH Century Identity Native American Healing

9.0 Excellent

3

The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane's 1895 American Civil War novel tracing young Henry Fleming's psychological journey from romantic illusion...

American 19TH Century Courage War

8.9 Great

4

Green Henry

Gottfried Keller's Swiss novel (first version 1854–55, revised 1879–80), following a painter's failed ambitions and wide...

Realism 19TH Century Identity Swiss German

8.8 Great

5

The Woman Warrior

1976 memoir-fiction hybrid by Maxine Hong Kingston about growing up Chinese-American in California; won the National Boo...

20TH Century Identity Female Protagonist Kingston

8.8 Great

6

Tonio Kröger

Thomas Mann's 1903 German novella exploring the tension between artistic temperament and bourgeois life through a young...

German Modernist Identity Mann

8.6 Great

7

Anton Reiser

Karl Philipp Moritz's semi-autobiographical German novel (1785–90), an early proto-bildungsroman depicting a youth's psy...

German 18TH Century Psychological Identity

8.4 Great

8

What Maisie Knew

1897 novel by Henry James rendering a young English girl's experience of her parents' divorce and remarriages entirely t...

19TH Century British James Innocence

8.4 Great

9

The Way to Rainy Mountain

1969 work by N. Scott Momaday blending personal memoir with Kiowa oral tradition and history, tracing the tribe's migrat...

Heritage 20TH Century Identity Native American

8.4 Great

10

Childhood, Boyhood, Youth

Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy (1852–56) depicting the psychological and moral development of a young Russian noblem...

Russian 19TH Century Autobiography Growth

8.3 Great

11

Childhood (Gorky)

First volume of Maxim Gorky's autobiographical trilogy (1913), depicting the author's harsh early years within a struggl...

Russian 20TH Century Autobiographical Poverty

8.3 Great

12

Goodbye, Columbus

1959 debut by Philip Roth comprising a novella and five stories examining Jewish-American identity in New Jersey; the co...

American 20TH Century Identity Jewish American

8.3 Great

13

Bless Me, Ultima

Rudolfo Anaya's 1972 Chicano novel set in post-WWII New Mexico, tracing young Antonio Márez's spiritual and cultural com...

American Identity Spirituality Chicano

8.2 Great

14

Der Nachsommer

Adalbert Stifter's 1857 Austrian novel, notable for its deliberately slow pace and idealized vision of humanist self-cul...

Classical Austrian Education 19TH Century

8.1 Great

15

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

1959 novel by Mordecai Richler about an ambitious young Jewish man in Montreal who pursues wealth and land by any means...

Canadian 20TH Century Identity Ambition

8.1 Great

16

Patron Saints of Nothing

2019 YA novel by Randy Ribay about a Filipino-American teenager who travels to the Philippines to uncover the truth behi...

American Identity Philippines Ya

8.1 Great

17

In the World

Second volume of Gorky's autobiographical trilogy (1916), following young Alexei through a series of menial jobs as he s...

Russian 20TH Century Autobiographical Poverty

8.0 Great

18

Walk Two Moons

1994 novel by Sharon Creech, winner of the 1995 Newbery Medal, about a girl traveling cross-country with her grandparent...

American Identity Grief Ya

8.0 Great

19

Bread and Wine

Ignazio Silone's 1936 Italian novel following a socialist exile who returns to fascist rural Italy disguised as a priest...

Italian 20TH Century Identity Political

7.9 Good

20

The Raven Boys

2012 first entry in Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle YA series, set in Virginia, following a psychic's daughter and four...

Fantasy American Identity Ya

7.9 Good