Books like I am Lazarus by Anna Kavan

The Bell Jar is the sole novel by Sylvia Plath, a psychologically intense and autobiographical look at a young woman’s decline into mental illness.

A love story set in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, where Anne Elliot finds herself amidst the Regency era as her sister rents Miss Elliot's father's house, leading to an unexpected reunion with Captain Frederick Wentworth and the return of her beloved.

A young woman's quest to find meaning in her life and the meaning of madness through a self-harm experience.

Virginia Woolf’s *The Waves* traces seven friends from childhood to middle age, intertwining their social milestones with a lyrical exploration of inner consciousness, identity, and self‑actualization.

180 p. ; 21 cm.1010L Lexile

William Styron’s memoir recounts his 1985 struggle with severe depression, hospitalization, and recovery, offering an honest portrait of living with mental illness.

Nightwood traces the complex love affairs of Robin Vote as she moves through relationships with Felix Volkbein, Nora Flood, and Jenny Petherbridge, exploring erotic obsession and identity in a richly symbolic, New York Times–reviewed work of American fiction.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s surreal, dream‑like novel follows a pianist caught in a mysterious European city where everyone knows him, forces him to play roles he did not choose, and ultimately leads him toward self‑discovery.

Matt Hunter, a former criminal, uncovers a shocking truth that puts his freedom and love for Olivia in jeopardy.

Three sisters struggle to reconcile their faith with the world outside the convent.

Two British soldiers become unlikely friends in Cold War espionage and today's world of terrorism.

A contemporary novel set in London about the relationship between two strangers who dine at the same restaurant and how their lives intersect over the course of a single dinner party.

Anna Kavan’s experimental novel explores identity and reality through repeated lives, asking who we truly are amid shifting circumstances.

Survivor: A New Yorker's Tale of Rebirth and Unexpected Connections

A young woman's quest for love and reconciliation after her husband's death in a French plantation setting in the 1870s.

Celina, driven by a desire to escape her wealthy father and seek independence, marries a man she meets, journeys to the Far East, becomes widowed, writes a successful career, and ultimately wrecks the lives of her daughter and sister‑in‑law.

A young woman from Texas and a Holocaust survivor form a successful cosmetics business, but betrayal and debt threaten their partnership and legacy.

A heartwarming coming-of-age story about a prep school student trying to fit in with his adoptive tribe while hiding his true self.

"The first novel to appear in English by one of the most talked-about and critically acclaimed writers of new Mexican fiction. From a psychoanalyst's couch, the narrator looks back on her bizarre childhood--in which she was born with an abnormality in her eye into a family intent on fixing it. In a world without the time and space for innocence, the narrator intimately recalls her younger self--a fierce and discerning girl open to life's pleasures and keen to its ruthless cycle of tragedy. With raw language and a brilliant sense of humor, both delicate and unafraid, Nettel strings together hard-won, unwieldy memories--taking us from Mexico City to Aix-en-Provence, France, then back home again--to create a portrait of the artist as a young girl. In these pages, Nettel's art of storytelling transforms experience into inspiration and a new startling perception of reality. "Nettel's eye...gives rise to a tension, subtle but persistent, that immerses us in an uncomfortable reality, disquieting, even disturbing--a gaze that illuminates her prose like an alien sun shining down on our world." --Valeria Luiselli, author of Sidewalks and Faces in the Crowd "It has been a long time since I've found in the literature of my generation a world as personal and untransferable as that of Guadalupe Nettel." --Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling "Nettel reveals the subliminal beauty within beings...and painstakingly examines the intimacies of her soul." --Magazine Litteraire "Guadalupe Nettel's storytelling power is majestic."--Typographical Era In Praise of Natural Histories "Five flawless stories..." --The New York Times "Nettel's stories are as atmospheric and emotionally battering as Checkhov's."--Asymptote"-- "From a psychoanalyst's couch, the narrator looks back on her bizarre childhood--in which she was born with a birth defect into a family intent on fixing it--having somehow survived the emotional havoc she went through. And survive she did, but not unscathed. This intimate narrative echoes the voice of the narrator's younger self: a sharp, sensitive girl who is keen to life's gifts and hardships. With bare language and smart humor, both delicate and unafraid, the narrator strings a strand of touching stories together in a portrait of an unconventional childhood that crushed her, scarred her, mended her, tore her apart and ultimately made her whole"--