Books like The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse — picked by fans

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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Long Way Down does an incredible job of telling such a contained story, telling everything within the span of a single elevator ride.

Reynolds uses the elevator trip to make the protagonist encounter ghosts of multiple dead people in his community, all connected to his murdered brother, and question if vengeance is the right answer to his grief. This is a well-deserved classic, and a must-read for all novel-in-verse fans!

In Ordinary People, the boating-accident death of the older teenage son shatters the family.

Conrad, the younger son who was also on the boat, is tormented by self-blame for his brother’s death. After a suicide attempt and a psychiatric hospitalization, Conrad is released. He is still beset with guilt and depression and begins outpatient treatment with Dr. Berger, a blunt yet also an empathetic psychiatrist.

I like the way he helps Conrad reconsider his unrealistic guilt and helps him look at the limitations of his mother, a parent unable to provide him the warmth and support he needs. I like the way Dr. Berger is portrayed as caring and skilled, an example of how psychiatrists effectively treat their patients.

This is the book I reach for when I want the war for the soul told without shortcuts.

Dostoevsky takes me straight into the collision of faith and doubt, love and cruelty, repentance and self-justification—and he refuses to flatter any of it. The “Grand Inquisitor” sequence alone sharpened how I think about coercion dressed up as righteousness, which is a chillingly modern spiritual danger.

When I’m writing redemption, I want it to cost something—and this novel taught me how suffering, freely offered, can become a doorway instead of a sentence.

This one was very unique in that it barely introduces the dystopian world in the first book and focuses on it much later in the series despite the significant impact it has on the characters from the very first page. The lead is male, which is becoming less common these days, and gives us a more calculating look into the world of dystopia. I enjoyed seeing things from another angle as that really reminds me to explore those less-common threads in my own writing as well. And what could be more interesting than people disappearing on their birthday and then finding out who is taking them, right?

Besides well written non-fiction and sapphic romance, my favorite type of book is always going to be middle grade fiction.

In AfterMath, 12-year-old Lucy is struggling with the death of her younger brother from heart failure. When she changes school, she comes into the aftermath of a school shooting where her classmates struggle with grief of a different kind. Chock full of character development and with a solid plot, this takes a gentle look at grief, trauma, gun violence, terminal illness, and the real-life things that we have to face, no matter our age.

I love a story where children are resilient, though I wish they didn’t have to be so resilient all the time. 

This rare story had me laughing out loud, sobbing, and sighing at the beauty of it from beginning to end. It’s not about a ghost in the paranormal sense, but the story revolves around a family haunted by the death of a son.

Pup (James) Flannigan, the youngest of eight siblings, is used to being the silent observer at his raucous family gatherings. When his oldest brother dies suddenly, grief and denial rattle the family to its core.

I fell in love with Pup immediately! He’s a funny, sensitive guy who’s powerless against his family’s tide of sadness until an art teacher encourages him to pick up a camera. Pup’s slow transformation from helplessly observing to using the camera lens to bring the damaged, grieving people he loves into clear focus is a beautiful thing to watch.