Here are 4 books that Inventing the Renaissance fans have personally recommended if you like
Inventing the Renaissance.
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I read somewhere that the modern novel as we know it began with "Middlemarch." That feels right, despite its omniscient narrator and the differences between the social conventions of the day and our current times. As a novelist, I appreciated the way Eliot juggled so many characters and plot lines and wrapped them up in such a satisfying way. It's a big book, for sure, but so worth it. I can't imagine why I waited so long to read it.
Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury.
Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.
Henry James described Middlemarch as a 'treasurehouse of detail' while Virginia Woolf famously endorsed George Eliot's masterpiece…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 PALESTINE BOOK AWARDS • From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values.
"[A] bracing memoir and manifesto." —The New York Times
"I can't think of a more important piece of writing to read right now. I found hope here, and help, to face what the world is now, all that it isn't anymore. Please read this. I promise you won't regret it." —Tommy Orange,…
This could easily be, I don't know, heartwarming glurge about the importance of found family. Instead, it's a haunting and elegant story about art, revolution, and the damage it leaves behind. Griffon, a teenage trans boy living in a post-apocalyptic, flooded New York, is adopted by an older t4t couple, Etoine and Zaffre, who are artists and refugees from a city called Stephensport, which is frozen in time. In their youth, they were part of a revolutionary movement that left them with both physical and mental scars, and it's only after their deaths that Griffon reads through Etoine's journal and learns what happened.
I doubt Fellman set out to write something so perfectly tailored to my tastes but he sure did.
When your parents die, you find out who they really were.
Griffon Keming's second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon's new parents had troubles of their own - both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.
Griffon's best clue to his parents' lives is in his…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
We start with the news that a cliff on the seaside in Cornwall has collapsed, obliterating a small private hotel. Some guests died, some survived. The remainder of the book is the story of their last days. The characters range from slightly feral children to an extremely difficult clergyman, representing a range of post-war British society. Kennedy has a keen satirical eye but, despite their follies and sins, you find yourself gradually thinking “not that one” and “I hope she makes it”. You’ll have to read it to find out who does.
This summer holiday vintage crime classic exploring the mystery of a buried Cornish hotel invites us to solve the puzzle as detectives: perfect for fans of Celia Fremlin's Uncle Paul, Agatha Christie, or Richard Osman ... 'I am loving it!' Nigella Lawson 'Hilarious and perceptive ... Perfect.' Daily Mail 'Entertaining, beautifully written, and profound.' Tracy Chevalier 'Tense, touching, human, dire, and funny ... A feast indeed.' Elizabeth Bowen 'Kennedy is not only a romantic but an anarchist.' Anita Brookner 'Oh boy, what a treat; wonderfully sharp and funny ... Page-turningly good!' Lissa Evans 'So full of pleasure that you could…
