20 best-selling fiction books like My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar

Cover of My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar

My Beloved Life

By: Amitava Kumar

3.83

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

An exceptionally moving novel that traces the arc of a man's life from his 1935 birth in a small vi…

If you liked the fiction plot in My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar , here is a list of 20 books like this:

Cover of The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright

1. The Wren, the Wren

By: Anne Enright

3.55

Format: 278 pages, Hardcover

An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of… read more

Similar categories in Anne Enright's The Wren, the Wren book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"It's not that I think about him constantly, he is my way of thinking. His mind is my compass, his eyes my only mirror."

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don’t walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don't walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

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 Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"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 Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

3. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

By: Salman Rushdie

4.10

Format: 209 pages, Hardcover

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply pers… read more

Similar categories in Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

"Waiting is thinking, and to think deeply is, very often, to change one’s mind."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"I don’t usually think of my books as prophecies. I’ve had some trouble with prophets in my life, and I’m not applying for the job."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"To have a room of one’s own, one must have money. (I don’t think Virginia Woolf ever went to India, but her dictum stands, even there, even for men.)"

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"An intimacy of strangers. That's a phrase I've sometimes used to express the joyful thing that happens in the act of reading, that happy union of the interior lives of author and reader."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Cover of Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) by Colm Tóibín

4. Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2)

By: Colm Tóibín

3.82

Format: 294 pages, Hardcover

From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly movi… read more

Similar categories in Colm Tóibín's Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • historical
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
Cover of Wild Houses by Colin  Barrett

5. Wild Houses

By: Colin Barrett

3.78

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

A darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and sma… read more

Similar categories in Colin Barrett's Wild Houses book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"What you are in, Dev, is a holding pattern, only you're not holding out for anything."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"All boys, all children, are capable of cruelty at the right juncture of opportunity and circumstance, but only a few become committed prodigies of sadism..."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"In the dream, exactly as he had in real life, he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the shapeless, prospectless days to come, days when there would be no need to get out of bed or brush his teet…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"He looked around the empty kitchen. A part of him wanted this of course. A part of him had always wanted this, to be alone, away from even the prospect of any demand upon him to talk, to interact, to…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

Cover of The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota

6. The Spoiled Heart

By: Sunjeev Sahota

3.82

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Nayan Olak is a man with a past. Haunted by the sudden death of his young son and his mother and dr… read more

Similar categories in Sunjeev Sahota's The Spoiled Heart book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
Cover of Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham

7. Great Expectations

By: Vinson Cunningham

3.35

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man’s life in the highly a… read more

Similar categories in Vinson Cunningham's Great Expectations book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
"For him, identity had been a kind of curation or collation—he picked up aspects as he went, freestyle."

-Vinson Cunningham, Great Expectations

"It had always struck me as a place to be lost, experienced passage by passage in a series of unfolding images—not something you could take in in one possessive glance."

-Vinson Cunningham, Great Expectations

Cover of Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

8. 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 Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
"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 The Coast Road by Alan Murrin

9. The Coast Road

By: Alan Murrin

3.99

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

A poignant and heartbreaking debut novel set in the 1990s in a claustrophobic coast town. With divo… read more

Similar categories in Alan Murrin's The Coast Road book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • historical
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
Cover of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

10. This Strange Eventful History

By: Claire Messud

3.63

Format: 448 pages, Hardcover

An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest… read more

Similar categories in Claire Messud's This Strange Eventful History book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • historical
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
"Family life, like playing chess, involved always thinking several steps ahead."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"Literature... Now, that's a religion I can believe in. That is perhaps my God."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"... she'd been a fool, enamored of a figment, had created the soul of a man who never existed -"

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"All-U-Can Hi-way 4-Sale Thru. This American English thrilled him - its energy, its freedom, its carelessness."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

Cover of The Tower by Flora Carr

11. The Tower

By: Flora Carr

3.70

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

A bold, feminist debut novel, reimagining Mary, Queen of Scots’s darkest hour, when she was held ho… read more

Similar categories in Flora Carr's The Tower book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • historical
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
Cover of My Friends by Hisham Matar

12. My Friends

By: Hisham Matar

4.34

Format: 399 pages, Hardcover

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return , a luminous novel of friendship, family, and … read more

Similar categories in Hisham Matar's My Friends book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
"A vast distance exists between a protester and his slogan; the entire history of politics exists in that gap."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"For a writer, exile is prison, a severing from the source, and so, courageous or not, he dies in front of our eyes."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"She was older and all the more beautiful, had the weary tiredness of one who, in surrendering to her life, was ennobled by it."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"I walked off feeling an emptiness well up inside me. It seemed, for all the emptiness that it was, a presence. It made me want to run away, dive deeper into myself, into that cold desolation, to the …"

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

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 Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
Cover of Shanghailanders by Juli Min

14. Shanghailanders

By: Juli Min

3.51

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

A dazzling and ambitious debut novel that follows a cosmopolitan Shanghai household backward in tim… read more

Similar categories in Juli Min's Shanghailanders book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • asia
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
Cover of The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

15. The Safekeep

By: Yael van der Wouden

4.08

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the … read more

Similar categories in Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • historical
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
Cover of You Are Here by Karin Lin-Greenberg

16. You Are Here

By: Karin Lin-Greenberg

3.76

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

The inhabitants of a small town have long found that their lives intersect at one focal the local … read more

Similar categories in Karin Lin-Greenberg's You Are Here book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
Cover of Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

17. Behind You Is the Sea

By: Susan Muaddi Darraj

4.14

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

An exciting debut novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American communi… read more

Similar categories in Susan Muaddi Darraj's Behind You Is the Sea book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
Cover of My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar

18. My Beloved Life

By: Amitava Kumar

3.83

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

An exceptionally moving novel that traces the arc of a man's life from his 1935 birth in a small vi… read more

Similar categories in Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • asia
  • india
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
Cover of Held by Anne   Michaels

19. Held

By: Anne Michaels

3.66

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A breathtaking and mysterious new novel from the beloved Anne Michaels, internationally bestselling… read more

Similar categories in Anne Michaels's Held book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • historical
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
"Who can say what happens when we are remembered?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Do we really need our own misery to teach us to be kind?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Would he know the moment of his death or would it be like night falling."

-Anne Michaels, Held

Cover of The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma

20. The Road to the Country

By: Chigozie Obioma

3.92

Format: 384 pages, Hardcover

A sweeping, heart-racing, mystical novel about a university student in Lagos trying to save his bro… read more

Similar categories in Chigozie Obioma's The Road to the Country book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • historical
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
"It has always seemed to him that the world was full of things; that even in one’s loneliest moments, there was often a crowd. But the things one loved remained invisible, hidden amongst the multitude…"

-Chigozie Obioma, The Road to the Country

Cover of Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

21. Long Island Compromise

By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner

3.88

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatter… read more

Similar categories in Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise book and Amitava Kumar's My Beloved Life

  • literary fiction
  • historical
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels

12 best-selling novels books like My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar

Transform Your Habits

The Wren, the Wren

Anne Enright

3.55

Transform Your Habits

All Fours

Miranda July

3.81

Transform Your Habits

Wild Houses

Colin Barrett

3.78

Transform Your Habits

The Spoiled Heart

Sunjeev Sahota

3.82

View all the books

19 must-read fiction books like Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

Transform Your Habits

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

Shubnum Khan

3.87

Transform Your Habits

James

Percival Everett

4.54

Transform Your Habits

Memory Piece

Lisa Ko

3.22

Transform Your Habits

Wandering Stars

Tommy Orange

3.89

View all the books

Never miss a story from us, get weekly updates in your inbox.