Autofiction and Introspective Novels To Start Reading

From “a formidably gifted writer” (The New York Times Book Review), a book that asks: Is there life after the internet? Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.

Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor named Julius, doing his residency, wanders. The walks are a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and they give him the opportunity to process his relationships, his recent breakup, his present, his past. Though he’s navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation. Seething with intelligence and written in a clear, rhythmic voice, Open City is a haunting, mature, profound work about our country and our world.

Moving between New York City, Mexico City, and Iowa City, a young member of the Mexican elite sees his life splinter in a centuries-spanning debut that blends the Latin American traditions of Robert Bolaño and Fernanda Melchor with the autofiction of U.S. writers like Ben Lerner and Teju Cole. This stunning debut explores whiteness, power, immigration, and the history of Mexican literature, to wrestle with the contradictory relationship between two countries bound by geography and torn apart by politics.

From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin’s quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.

A marvelous novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Lowland and Interpreter of Maladies about a woman questioning her place in the world, wavering between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties.

From the author of the “dazzling … and daring” Pond (O magazine), the adventures of a young woman discovering her own genius, through the people she meets — and dreams up — along the way.

On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, one of our great novelists delivers a playful and profound work about memory, love, and the writer’s endgame. “[Barnes] has not merely blurred the line between fact and fiction; he has expunged it … skillfully weaving in thoughts on love, on aging, on writing fiction, on preparing for death. It’s a virtuoso performance” (Clare McHugh, The Washington Post).

A “formally daring, emotionally devastating, and deeply political” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of personal grief through the prism of the color white, from the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian.

A darkly funny, soul-rending novel of love in an epoch of collapse — one woman’s furious revisiting of family, marriage, work, sex, and motherhood.

When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the Great Dane he has left behind. A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.

A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I’d always known that. But I’d never suspected how easily I’d fall into one anyway. An “eviscerating” (The New York Times) novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars of us all — from the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments. Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.

Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married foreigner, where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference. In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion.

From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African American woman coming of age — a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country.

A novel about the dangerous power of storytelling, sparked by a chance encounter: on an overnight train from London to Edinburgh, a translator becomes engrossed in the stories of the strangers who share her compartment. Over the course of a long night, the travelers share food, drink, and confidences that range across space and time, resurfacing old losses and betrayals and blurring the lines between fact and fiction. I Made You Up Inside My Head asks how far we are allowed to borrow — and bend — the truth to our own ends.

From the beloved author of the nationwide bestseller Dept. of Speculation comes a “darkly funny and urgent” (NPR) tour de force about a family and a nation in crisis.

Almost ten years have passed since Karl Ove Knausgaard’s father drank himself to death. Vulnerable and assailed by doubts, he is now embarking on a new novel. With an uncanny eye for detail, Knausgaard breaks down his own life story to its elementary particles, reliving memories, reopening wounds, and examining with candor the turbulence and the epiphanies that emerge from his own experience of fatherhood, the fallout in the wake of his father’s death, and his visceral connection to music, art, and literature. This Proustian masterpiece opens a window into one of the most original minds writing today.