Very literary fiction recommends

[UntamedShrew]

Morning all. I’m looking for any recommends from those whose reading tastes lean towards the highbrow end of literary fiction.

I have a very bookish father and would like to get him some challenging but rewarding reads for the winter. Have you read anything that has stayed with you? He likes character led stories but has really broad ranging interests within this - doesn’t need to be modern or historical, British or international etc.

thank you ☺️

Has he read Lawrence Durrell? The Avignon Quartet or, better, the Alexandria Quartet.
I really like John Cowper Powys, particularly Weymouth Sands. As you can see I have a penchant for the vaguely mystical!
More grounded, and following on from earlier recommendations for Anthony Powell and Patrick Hamilton, what about Henry Green - I've read, and enjoyed, one of the trilogies 'Loving, Living, Party Going'.

Thinking of what I have read this year (also of a literary leaning).

Best novel/s
Ocean Vuong The Emperor of Gladness - notably has a poisonous TLS review.
Sally Rooney Intermezzo (have found her other fiction unreadable)

Non fiction
Robert MacFarLane Underworld
Superb

Biography
Al Pacino Sony Boy
Very readable, especially if your DF also likes films

I hesitate to suggest this, @UntamedShrew, because I suspect your DF will have read all these long ago, but I’m going to say the novels of Angus Wilson. They’re not fashionable nowadays but they’re proper, satisfying, intelligent pieces of writing (and can be hilariously witty in a very grown-up way).

I am currently reading Kristin Lavransdatter (see the readalongthread) and I think it would meet your criteria.

@38thparallel Great minds think a like! The Go Between is such a beautiful book. I think the same about The English Patient - A Farewell to Arms covers the same ground and is so much better.

I must join one of those read along threads, that series looks great. Thanks for all these - any he has read, I more likely haven’t so my Goodreads now has lots of ‘want to reads’ that look like actual good reads for 2026 now 😊

The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante

The Stone Book Quartet by Alan Garner.

I was about to suggest The Go-between! So often quoted ‘The past is a different country, they do things differently there’
Le Grand Mealunes Alain Fournier
A Hero of our time Lernontov
The Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
Dept of speculation Jenny Offill
And Quiet flows the Don Sholokhov
Sweet William Beryl Bainbridge
I capture the castle Shirely Jackson
Agree that Daphne du Maurier is underrated, I’ve just finished the birds and other stories, gave me very vivid dreams!

Also David Grann’s The Wager is absolutely brilliant

I think the same about The English Patient - A Farewell to Arms covers the same ground and is so much better.

A Farewell to Arms is such a brilliant book. Thank you for reminding me, it’s time for a reread.
I could never take the The English Patient seriously after Frederick Forsythe demolished it in a review pointing out the numerous inaccuracies, wrong planes, travel to and from places that would have been impossible during the war, a corpse in perfect condition despite being left in a cave in the desert for weeks, double beds in a Cistercian monastery etc.

Le Grand Mealunes Alain Fournier.

Yes! So tragic he was killed so young.

Im glad the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies has been mentioned, but his Cornish Trilogy is also absolutely wonderful and well worth a read if you haven’t.

I finally plucked up the courage to read Septology by Jon Fosse earlier this year. It took a bit of tuning in, but the writing was beautiful and the questions it asks about what makes a meaningful life (and the various ways in which it can be derailed) are really interesting.

And the Salterton Trilogy!

This inspired my name after all. All his books are brilliant.

I like anything by Beryl Bainbridge

One of the best books I've read recently is A Heart So White by Javier Marias

Julian Barnes - A Sense of an Ending, although he's likely read that.

Same with William Boyd Any Human Heart. So readable it's not challenging exactly but very much character led.

I'm currently reading Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin. But again it's probably something he's already read. But it's a great modernist book.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith - it’s been one of my favourites for years, my dad sounds similar to yours and he FINALLY got around to reading it recently and couldn’t stop raving about it. It is a genuine modern literary fiction classic.

The Remains of the Day
Dangerous Liaisons
Slaughterhouse Five

I’m realising simply linking to another thread, as I have above, won’t tell anyone who isn’t familiar with her work about Helen DeWitt.

If my own bookish father had still been alive in 2000 I would have been able to share her first book

The Last Samurai

with him. And we could have been excited together about the prospect of her new book. This article tells you everything:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/books/helen-dewitt-your-name-here.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xE8.djsu.Fage3B-Tz7Ob&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The Remains of the Day is such a good book. Also Hold Me Close, it still haunts me, brilliant, but I sort of wish I hadn’t read it.

It's hard to recommend such books. All I can do is list the books I love that are either considered classics or are by classic/great writers:

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
Dickens: David Copperfield
Oscar Wilde: Dorian Gray
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha
Willa Cather: My Antonia
Ford Madox Ford: Parade's End
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited, The Sword of Honor, Decline and Fall
Antony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time
Nabokov: Pale Fire
Aldous Huxley: Chrome Yellow, Point Counter Point
Iris Murdoch: The Sea, The Sea
Patrick Fermor: A Time of Gifts
James Joyce: Dubliners
Robert Graves: Goodbye to All That

How about classic non-fiction? I'm a big fan of essays. Maybe try the selected essays of Montaigne or Aldous Huxley or Bertrand Russell. Orwell's collected essays are wonderful – much better than his fiction.

The really interesting (and very under-read) Ishiguru novel is of course, The Unconsoled. I tend to think this is his true masterpiece - it's stayed with me for 20 years since I read it.

See how your papa likes that one @UntamedShrew ?

Louise Erdreich
Jonathan Coe

If he reads translations, I highly recommend Thomas Bernhard

If he likes classic texts, maybe he would enjoy work inspired by them? I read James by Percival Everett this summer, a retelling of Huckleberry Finn.

In a similar vein, The Master by Colm Tobin.

Miss Smila's Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg

The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif

He's probably read A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry?