7 best-selling fantasy books like Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

Cover of Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

Parasol Against the Axe

By: Helen Oyeyemi

3.22

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Peaces and Gingerbread returns with a novel about competit…

If you liked the fantasy plot in Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi , here is a list of 7 books like this:

Cover of The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer  Croft

1. The Extinction of Irena Rey

By: Jennifer Croft

3.26

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

From the International Booker Prize–winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, a propulsive, be… read more

Similar categories in Jennifer Croft's The Extinction of Irena Rey book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • books about books
  • audiobook
"The sun was higher, a white light between the birches that arched and bared their lenticels, shimmering their leaves."

-Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey

"Glittering crystalline rainbows extended in every direction, while gentle gold beams swept between the softened trees that sparkled and beckoned and forbade."

-Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey

"It was a new moon, but the stars of the northern hemisphere transformed her slim sinuous home, converting the oak strips on the convex walls into quicksilver that momentarily held the frenzied shadow…"

-Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey

"It was barely spring in the southern hemisphere, and Buenos Aires was not yet soft, or sumptuous, or purple.* *I wasn't sure what this meant at first, but when I asked this author to explain it, she …"

-Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey

Cover of All Fours by Miranda July

2. All Fours

By: Miranda July

3.81

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

The New York Times–bestselling author of The First Bad Man returns with an irreverently sexy, tende… read more

Similar categories in Miranda July's All Fours book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"But maybe the road split between: a life spent longing vs. a life that was continually surprising"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"Maybe we shouldn't do that," Jordi said. "Flatten ourselves like that. Erratic doesn't have to mean crazy or irresponsible. Shouldn't we be normalizing change?"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"I guess any calling, no mater what it is, is a kind of unresolved ache," I said, giving in to knowing more than him. "It's a problem that you can't fix, but there is some relief in knowing you will c…"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"For me lying created just the right amount of problems and what you saw was just one of my four or five faces- each real, each with different needs. The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to co…"

-Miranda July, All Fours

Cover of Exhibit by R.O. Kwon

3. Exhibit

By: R.O. Kwon

3.24

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, an exhilarating, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between… read more

Similar categories in R.O. Kwon's Exhibit book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
Cover of Memory Piece by Lisa Ko

4. Memory Piece

By: Lisa Ko

3.22

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by th… read more

Similar categories in Lisa Ko's Memory Piece book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"The physicality of making things, the performance, temporarily displaced how stuck she felt, in this particular body, family, town, time."

-Lisa Ko, Memory Piece

Cover of Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

5. Wandering Stars

By: Tommy Orange

3.89

Format: 315 pages, Hardcover

The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange’s breakout best seller There … read more

Similar categories in Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"And in the year 1924 Indian citizenship will have been granted, even though they will mean to dissolve tribes by giving citizenship, dissolve being another word for disappearance, a kind of chemical …"

-Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

Cover of Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

6. Martyr!

By: Kaveh Akbar

4.24

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves… read more

Similar categories in Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

7. Headshot

By: Rita Bullwinkel

3.63

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical inti… read more

Similar categories in Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"The desire to please people is the desire to not be singular."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"Tanya Maw's sister is two years older, the perfect age gap for wisdom transmission."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It can be intoxicating to play a sport that requires one to look in their opponent's eyes."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It's a warmth that she'll feel again very few times in her life. It's almost like love, but it has a surer, less desperate edge to it."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

Cover of Parade by Rachel Cusk

8. Parade

By: Rachel Cusk

3.70

Format: 198 pages, Hardcover

From the exhilarating mind of Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy, Parade disturbs and defin… read more

Similar categories in Rachel Cusk's Parade book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"He knew that [his work] embodied change, and he wasn’t interested in change. He was interested in the fragments that change leaves behind in its storming passage toward the future."

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

"Not to be understood is effectively to be silenced, but not understanding can in its turn legitimise that silence, can illuminate one’s own unknowability. Art is the pact of individuals denying socie…"

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

"Sanity and insanity were not opposites but rather were the two faces of inanimate matter, the point at which the existence of consciousness can get no further in breaking down the existence of substa…"

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

"The impulse to have a child is very often a response to the woman’s own childhood, as though her childhood has left her incomplete, or has taken a part of her that she is driven to find again. The st…"

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

Cover of The Morningside by Téa Obreht

9. The Morningside

By: Téa Obreht

3.61

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

From the critically beloved, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland, a ma… read more

Similar categories in Téa Obreht's The Morningside book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • fiction
  • novels
  • fantasy
  • audiobook
Cover of Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

10. Enlightenment

By: Sarah Perry

3.70

Format: 384 pages, Hardcover

A dazzling new work of literary fiction from the author of The Essex Serpent, a story of love and a… read more

Similar categories in Sarah Perry's Enlightenment book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • fantasy
  • audiobook
"Thomas [Hart] lived where he'd been born, and where (so he often thought without rancor) he'd very likely die; and if he lived alone he was not lonely, that being a condition not of solitude but of l…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"So I told her this: that it's true I've only rarely been happy, and perhaps more often been sad. But I have been content. I have lived. I have felt everything available to me: I've been faithless, de…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"I wish I could say, James, that we forgave each other in the end. I wish I could say: she put her head on my shoulder and I welcomed it and we laughed and said all was well. But in fact we were quiet…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"...in the ordinary way we love because we're loved, and give more or less what we're given. But to love without return is more strange and more wonderful, and not the humiliating thing I'd once taken…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

Cover of Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

11. Cahokia Jazz

By: Francis Spufford

4.03

Format: 496 pages, Hardcover

A thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently—from th… read more

Similar categories in Francis Spufford's Cahokia Jazz book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • fantasy
  • fiction
Cover of You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue

12. You Dreamed of Empires

By: Álvaro Enrigue

3.85

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

From a visionary Mexican author, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story that reimagine… read more

Similar categories in Álvaro Enrigue's You Dreamed of Empires book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • literature
  • fiction
  • novels
  • fantasy
  • audiobook
Cover of The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes

13. The Alternatives

By: Caoilinn Hughes

3.48

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

“A tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for ou… read more

Similar categories in Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of The Book of Love by Kelly Link

14. The Book of Love

By: Kelly Link

3.50

Format: 628 pages, Hardcover

The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attu… read more

Similar categories in Kelly Link's The Book of Love book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • magical realism
  • fantasy
  • fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

15. Parasol Against the Axe

By: Helen Oyeyemi

3.22

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Peaces and Gingerbread returns with a novel about competit… read more

Similar categories in Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • literature
  • science fiction fantasy
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • fantasy
  • books about books
  • audiobook
Cover of Brat by Gabriel Smith

16. Brat

By: Gabriel Smith

3.53

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

From a provocative new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protag… read more

Similar categories in Gabriel Smith's Brat book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • fantasy
  • audiobook
"I chose this one. This is the one I care about."

-Gabriel Smith, Brat

Cover of The Invisible Hotel by Yeji Y. Ham

17. The Invisible Hotel

By: Yeji Y. Ham

3.38

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

A work of literary horror in the gothic tradition, The Invisible Hotel is a startling, speculative … read more

Similar categories in Yeji Y. Ham's The Invisible Hotel book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • magical realism
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
Cover of Mother Doll by Katya Apekina

18. Mother Doll

By: Katya Apekina

3.78

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

A kaleidoscopic novel about the shadow of trauma in Russian history that follows four generations o… read more

Similar categories in Katya Apekina's Mother Doll book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literature
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
Cover of The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya

19. The Hypocrite

By: Jo Hamya

3.55

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

From a fiercely talented writer poised to be a new generation’s Rachel Cusk or Deborah Levy, a nove… read more

Similar categories in Jo Hamya's The Hypocrite book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"No stories are entirely imaginary, cherub, he'd said then. Everything is always a little bit real. Sometimes you steal things from other stories and change them until they work how you like."

-Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite

"The contradiction of the time had been the heightened moral obligation to consider other people as a means to keeping one's own self-interest afloat. Showing other people care meant avoiding them."

-Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite

"In the theatre's dark, he weighs up what to do out of love. There have been enough divergences so far for him to believe that Sophia's play is a self-contained thing that may only tangentially concer…"

-Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite

Cover of Cecilia by K-Ming Chang

20. Cecilia

By: K-Ming Chang

3.32

Format: 145 pages, Paperback

A surreal novella about the intensity and eroticism of girlhood friendships, the ecstasy of desire … read more

Similar categories in K-Ming Chang's Cecilia book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • contemporary
Cover of Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler

21. Banal Nightmare

By: Halle Butler

3.64

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

A ferocious novel by one of the boldest voices in American fiction and the author of The New Me, th… read more

Similar categories in Halle Butler's Banal Nightmare book and Helen Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook

17 must-read audiobook books like Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

Transform Your Habits

The Extinction of Irena Rey

Jennifer Croft

3.26

Transform Your Habits

All Fours

Miranda July

3.81

Transform Your Habits

Exhibit

R.O. Kwon

3.24

Transform Your Habits

Memory Piece

Lisa Ko

3.22

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20 Best fiction books like Mother Doll by Katya Apekina

Transform Your Habits

Perfume & Pain

Anna Dorn

4.06

Transform Your Habits

The Extinction of Irena Rey

Jennifer Croft

3.26

Transform Your Habits

All Fours

Miranda July

3.81

Transform Your Habits

Exhibit

R.O. Kwon

3.24

View all the books

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