What inspired this question for me was reading Alex Haley’s “Roots” after having just read “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. I thought that the two taken together give a wonderfully detailed image of American slavery and it’s effects on the body (Roots) as well as on the soul (Beloved).
Another that came to mind was Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” and Hunter S Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” as I personally felt that FaL was written as a direct parody and skewering of the kind of transcendentalist optimism we see in someone like Kerouac.
I guess I’m thinking of books that look at similar issues from complimentary angles or books that seem heavily inspired by others and almost responding or expounding, so that you come away having learned more than the sum of their parts.
EDIT: Doesn’t have to be all fiction. Non-fiction is welcome as well.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Tru and Nelle
Albert Camus’ The outsider (or, The stranger, depending on the translation) and A happy death.
One can throw in The plague and Reflections on guillotine for good measure. The former helps you understand Camus’ way of writing while the later helps you realize his beliefs regarding death penalty.
A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul and Fireflies by Shiva Naipaul. Vidia and Shiva were brothers, and both books are fictionalizations based on their parents’ marriage, but where Vidia centers their father in Biswas, Shiva centers their mother in Fireflies
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene and Silence by Shusaku Endo. They both feel as if they are in conversation with each other. Both stories are about a flawed priest suffering in a land where Christianity is persecuted and how one maintains faith in a dark situations and hopelessness . The books also have dramatically different conclusions but still are deeply Christian to their core.
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene and Silence by Shusaku Endo. They both feel as if they are in conversation with each other. Both stories are about a flawed priest suffering in a land where Christianity is persecuted and how one maintains faith in a dark situations and hopelessness . The books also have dramatically different conclusions but still are deeply Christian to their core.
Paradise Lost and Good Omens.
I think Labyrinths by Borges and Piranesi by Clarke would be a great combo.
Two short stories, if you want to feel like you’ve been kicked in the head:
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? and A Distant Episode
Technically Laura Ingells Wilder’s Farmer Boy is just that, it is about the Wilders and not the Ingells.
David Copperfield and Demon Copperhead
Yep, half the fun is comparing the stories side by side. I was essentially doing parallel reads and it makes for a really neat experience. Really makes you feel like you’re traveling through time. David Copperfield feels more modern by it, and it makes you relate more strongly to a classic (which some people have trouble doing because we tend to perceive people in the past as stuffy and more serious than they were), and it makes Demon Copperfield shine and feel all the more devastating all the while. Reading them together highlights how hierarchies and social and economical inequality affects the poor and working class, especially the resulting exploitation of children.
1984 and Brave New World. They present an interesting contrast in how a dystopic society can maintain control over the population. One does so by terrorizing people until they’re too cowed to resist while the other inundates the public with drugs and mindless entertainment.
I’d add Mockingbird by Walter Tevis and make it a trilogy.
Rising Tide by John Barry with One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson and A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression by Andrew Coe and Jane Ziegelman.
1984, Brave New World (opposite dystopian views)
Anthem, Perdido Street Station (opposite quasi working views)
The Way Station, The Hobbit (grouded sci-fi vs. fantasy)
Robert Heinlein, author of “Starship Troopers” was a Navy officer who served between WWI and WWII. Joe Haldeman, author of “The Forever War” was written by a Vietnam draftee. It’s apparent. Also the director of the movie “Starship Troopers”, Paul Verhoeven, was a child in Nazi-occupied Holland, and I feel makes a great followup viewing.
Naomi Alderman, author of “The Power” was Margaret Atwood’s protege. The book plays with it’s relationship to “The Handmaids Tale”. >!The smug, sexist academic as a framing device, for instance!<. I honestly consider “The Power” to be a better sequel than “The Testaments”.
I didn’t know Alderman was a protege of Atwood but that makes SO much sense!
Heart of Darkness & Things Fall Apart
Yes - and there’s also a fascinating essay by Achebe called “An Image of Africa” that examines Conrad’s work which is a great bridge.