The Magus (1965)
A startlingly original novel about a young English graduate who takes a position as a teacher at a private school on a small Greek island. Bored and lonely he spends his free hours wandering alone until he meets a wealthy and mysterious neighbour. Soon he finds himself a victim of this man’s increasingly bizarre psychological games and obsessed with a young woman who may or may not be a willing participant in these games.
- ISBN:
- 9780316296199
- Length:
- 617 pages
Genres: fantasy, mystery, thriller, literary fiction, classics
Lists: …
Similar books
Trainspotting
Irvine Welsh
1993 · 348 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveScottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
On 5+ of the same lists57%Also classics and mysteryPersonalize your recommendations43%Less than Zero
Bret Easton Ellis
1985 · 208 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveSet in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age, in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money a place devoid of feeling or hope. Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also classics and literary fiction59%On 5+ of the same lists40%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations1%Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
2005 · 3 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and one of the world’s greatest storytellers comes “an insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (The New Yorker) about a teenager on the run and a deceptively simple old man. Now with a new introduction by the author. Here we meet fifteen-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey. “As powerful as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.... Reading Murakami ... is a striking experience in consciousness expansion.”—Chicago Tribune
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
On 5+ of the same lists69%Also fantasy and literary fictionPersonalize your recommendations31%The Secret History
Donna Tartt
1992 · 559 pages · 25 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveUnder the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also classics and literary fiction65%On 5+ of the same listsPersonalize your recommendations35%Crash
J. G. Ballard
1973 · 223 pages · 8 reviews
Others: Leaning positiveThe definitive cult, post-modern novel – a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism. When our narrator smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man's wife, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes. Then he encounters Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, who has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of erotic atrocities, each more sinister than the last. But Vaughan craves the ultimate crash - a head-on collision of blood, semen, engine coolant and iconic celebrity. First published in 1973 'Crash' remains one of the most shocking novels of the second half of the twentieth century and was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenburg.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
On 5+ of the same lists62%Also classics and mysteryPersonalize your recommendations38%Strangers On a Train
Patricia Highsmith
1950 · 256 pages · 0 reviews
The world of Patricia Highsmith has always been filled with ordinary people, all of whom are capable of very ordinary crimes. This theme was present from the beginning, when her debut, Strangers on a Train, galvanized the reading public. Here we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. "Some people are better off dead," Bruno remarks, "like your wife and my father, for instance." As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also classics and mystery55%On 4 of the same listsPersonalize your recommendations45%
