85 Books Like The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse

Hedayat (1903-1951) was an Iranian writer who knew that death and the mythic experience of Kairos time exists a hair’s breadth away from what we commonly experience as human life.

The Blind Owl was the book that gave me permission to write fiction: instead of writing a novel in standard form, I wanted to create a liminal space, a threshold world between real and unreal; to invite readers into an unfamiliar (and hopefully transformative) vision of humanity.

This is exactly what Hedayat does in The Blind Owl: we are immersed in a fable of otherworldly, repetitive, poetic, dark, and mesmerising power. The story (of jealousy, despair, the cyclical nature of life and death) has a rare depth and a sense of universal reach precisely because it has one foot in the liminal.

Kristóf (1935-2011) was a Hungarian writer who fled to Switzerland during the war and wrote in French.

The Notebook (the first in the trilogy) is currently number one on my list of all-time favourites. It has all the elements of storytelling that I love: deep, psychological insight into the human heart; adroit use of archetypes, which give the book a timeless, folkloric feel; concision (no waffling) and a poetic, pared-back language that creates a sense of startling immediacy.

Kristóf writes about World War II through the eyes of two young brothers in a Nazi-occupied country (unnamed), and she shocks us awake not through sensationalised violence but through matter-of-fact narration.

It reads like a cross-between dramatic monologue and biblical parable – she stretches the novel form and opens up new possibilities for writing. 

Like meat, this book was hard to digest. It made me feel anxiety, turmoil, and pain despite my uncertainty as to what exactly triggered these responses. The isolated experience of a woman believing herself to be a tree, attempting to achieve spiritual happiness while others overstepped their boundaries, felt so very violating and personal.

I love it when stories slice me down raw, revealing wounds I did not know existed beneath my skin.

This is an award-winning book that will take you somewhere you are unlikely to have been before. I recommend having been a soldier, as someone who directly and indirectly writes on war, and with the knowledge of it being a domain of human folly, enfolding extreme emotions extending from hate to love. It held me in its grip. It made the familiar unfamiliar in a way that invited self-reflection. While a translation, its command of language was evident

A driving force behind so many fiction writers is not just to tell a compelling story but to expose particular aspects of the human condition. Diop’s book does this very powerfully. He puts the tragedy of racism, the consequence of colonialism, and questions of masculinity directly before the reader with no option to look away, but with an implied command to look at your own views and values.

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I fell in love with these two brothers, Link and Hud, but I couldn’t help asking myself what I would do if I were one of their long line of failed babysitters. Their energy and hi-jinks would challenge anyone. At the same time those same characteristics make Link and Hud loveable and memorable. Never underestimate the creativity and intelligence of a child.

I hope all kids will embrace their imaginations and childhood years to have grand adventures. I loved the mix of comic book storytelling inserted within passages of text. 

In interviews, Paul Howarth has discussed the ways in which colonial Australia was essentially a second Wild West, albeit one scarcely explored in fiction. Only Killers and Thieves leans into that understanding and in doing so creates a vivid, blood-soaked, Biblical saga about revenge, redemption, and the lies upon which nations are built, full of unforgettable characters and passages of writing that will make your breath catch. That it is followed by an even better sequel is the icing on a magnificent cake.

I think this is one of the most remarkable books about transgender experiences available now. Aiden gives voice to both his excitement about becoming a big brother and his frustration with the practice of assigning babies a gender based on their body parts. I have never read another picture book that better reflects my own feelings as a trans person. This book is warm, funny, honest, and will help both parents and children better understand trans experiences and each other. 

I love the summer camp setting of this story, as many cryptids lurk in the forest. In addition to summer camp hijinks, the legend of the Jersey Devil, a cryptid supposedly living in New Jersey, is featured when strange things start happening in the woods and fellow campers disappear.

I loved the way the author took tidbits of the Jersey Devil and then fashioned her own mythical creature who may or may not be the evil monster the area believes it to be. A not-so-scary light horror with a ton of fun. 

Two African American brothers spend their summer in rural Virginia while their parents navigate a rough patch in their marriage. Genie, 11, and Ernie, 13, get to know their blind grandfather who has a special room filled with plants and songbirds. I identified with Genie, a worrier who likes to pose questions in his notebook. As the two brothers respond differently to their grandfather’s announcement that a brave man learns to shoot a gun at 14, Reynolds is also asking readers to consider what it means to be brave and how we should define family. I loved the themes and vivid setting of the book. As someone who visited a grandparent in a small, rural town each summer, I identified with the boys’ sense that they have travelled not just a state but a whole world away from home.

Justin Torres’s exquisite novel will make you want to beam and bawl and fight in all the best ways.

It tells the story of a clear-eyed, tender-hearted boy navigating a world where true safety is hard to find. As he comes of age in rural New York State in the 1980s, messages about masculinity, race, sexuality, and the expectations of family swirl around him, often violently, punctuating the world of inquisitive play he and his two older brothers create together.

We witness as Torres’s narrator fights for a vision of his own freedom, a complex fight that resists tidy endings, offering echoing truths instead.