Top 100 Psychological Fiction Books

Explore the top 100 Psychological Fiction books on SimilarBooks. Discover stories that place particular emphasis on thoughts, emotions, motivations, relationships and the inner lives of their characters. These books often explore identity, memory, obsession, trauma, perception and difficult personal choices through psychologically focused storytelling.

The books on this page are ranked using SimilarBooks popularity data based on reader activity on the site. The ranking can change over time as readers discover and view different books. Each title includes information about the book and author, together with its genre and subgenre where available, and a link to discover similar books.

Use this list to discover popular psychological fiction books and then explore related titles through SimilarBooks. The individual book pages provide further recommendations, making it easier to find books with similar themes, subjects and styles.

📘 Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Die Verwandlung

Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) is a novella written by Franz Kafka which was first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect (German: ungeheueres Ungeziefer, lit.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Character-Driven Fiction

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📘 The Secret History

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things is the debut novel of Indian writer Arundhati Roy. It is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" that lay down "who should be loved, and how. And how much." The book explores how the small things affect people's behavior and their lives.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Flowers for Algernon

Until he was thirty-two, Charlie Gordon --gentle, amiable, oddly engaging-- had lived in a kind of mental twilight. He knew knowledge was important and had learned to read and write after a fashion, but he also knew he wasn't nearly as bright as most of the people around him.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Latidos Que No Dije

"Latidos que no dije" es una <a href="https://somoslibros.net/" target="_blank">novela</a> que sigue la vida de Leire, una joven que atraviesa un momento difícil después de romper con su novio. Decidida a empezar de nuevo, se muda a Madrid en busca de una nueva vida y oportunidades para redescubrirse a sí misma.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 Never Let Me Go

Ishiguro explores what it means to have a soul and how art distinguishes man from other life forms. But above all, *Never Let Me Go* is a study of friendship and the bonds we form which make or break while we come of age.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 The lovely bones

This deluxe trade paperback edition of Alice Sebold's modern classic features French flaps and rough-cut pages.Once in a generation a novel comes along that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with readers of all ages.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf’s novel chronicles a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a politician’s wife in 1920s London, as she prepares to host a party that evening. The narrative follows Clarissa’s thoughts (and sometimes those of people she meets) as she goes about her errands, and events in the day remind her of her youth and friendships from the past.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Le fantôme de l'opéra

Christine is brought up by her itinerant musician father, whose death she mourns endlessly. She achieves a singing position in the Paris Opera line, where a mysterious voice teaches her to unleash her musical potential. The voice belongs to Erik, a deformed musical genius who lives in the opera house.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 Der Steppenwolf

A story that focuses on the loneliness and suffering of the protagonist, Harry Haller, who feels that he has no place in a world filled with meaningless frivolity. Having decided to take his own life a chance encounter causes him to change his views and he begins to learn ways to enjoy life.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Nineteen Minutes

The startling and poignant story of the aftermath of a tragic high school shooting, from the bestselling author of My Sister's Keeper and The Pact.'Picoult makes us ponder the ambiguous relationships between love and lying, legality and morality; the strange ways repressed memories leak into the present.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Room

Room is a 2010 novel by Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue. The story is told from the perspective of a five-year-old boy, Jack, who is being held captive in a small room along with his mother. Donoghue conceived the story after hearing about five-year-old Felix in the Fritzl case.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 The History of Love

Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing that she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author. Across New York an old man named Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Der Vorleser

Sie ist reizbar, rätselhaft und viel älter als er … und sie wird seine erste Leidenschaft. Sie hütet verzweifelt ein Geheimnis. Eines Tages ist sie spurlos verschwunden. Erst Jahre später sieht er sie wieder. Die fast kriminalistische Erforschung einer sonderbaren Liebe und bedrängenden Vergangenheit.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 We need to talk about Kevin

The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry. "Eva never really wanted to be a mother -- and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Zahir

A novel of obsession and redemption, The Zahir explores the dark side of marriage and the power of love to fulfill or destroy dreams.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 The Magus

A startlingly original novel about a young English graduate who takes a position as a teacher at a private school on a small Greek island. Bored and lonely he spends his free hours wandering alone until he meets a wealthy and mysterious neighbour.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Ordinary People

Calvin is a determined, successful provider and Beth an organized, efficient wife. They had two sons, Conrad and Buck, but now they have one. This novel inspired Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning film of the same name starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 PS, I Love You

PS, I love you is a romantic novel written by Cecilia Ahern. It was published by Gale in the year 2004 and it cost three hundred and ninety nine only. The cover of the book is designed with the name of the title and the name of the author herself. This book is consist of 470 pages.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 O Vendedor de Sonhos

El personaje principal de este libro, el vendedor de sueños, está dotado de un gran atrevimiento. Proclama a los cuatro vientos que las sociedades modernas se han convertido en un gran manicomio global, donde lo normal es estar ansioso y estresado, y lo anormal es ser saludable, tranquilo y sereno.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Social Psychology Fiction

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📘 Oceano mare

Ocean Sea (Italian: Oceano mare) is a 1993 novel by the Italian writer Alessandro Baricco. Its narrative revolves around the lives of a group of people gathered at a remote seaside hotel. The novel won the Viareggio Prize.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Character-Driven Fiction

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📘 Storia del nuovo cognome

Friends Lila and Elena are now in their twenties. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila. Meanwhile, Elena continues her journey of self-discovery. The two young women share a complex and evolving bond that brings them close at times, and drives them apart at others. Each vacillates between hurtful disregard and profound love for the other.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 The Terminal Man

The classic thriller and "New York Times" bestseller is reissued with a new look. Prone to violent seizures, Harry Benson undergoes an experimental procedure that implants electrodes in his brain, sending soothing pulses to the brain's pleasure canyon. However, Harry learns how to control the pulses and increase their frequency.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 金閣寺

The son of a poor rural priest becomes an acolyte at the Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Mizoguchi had built up an image of ideal beauty in his mind based on this Golden Pavilion; this ideal image causes him to feel disappointed in any supposed form of beauty, even the actual physical Golden Pavilion.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 The Accidental

The Accidental is a 2005 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith. It follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk. Amber's arrival has a profound effect on all the family members. Eventually she is cast out the house by the mother, Eve.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Seize the Day

is a man in his mid-forties, temporarily living in the Hotel Gloriana on the Upper West Side of New York City, the same hotel in which his father has taken residence for a number of years.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Character-Driven Fiction

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📘 The maids are not to blame

The life of an orphan girl (ebele) who is sent to live with her aunt in the city after the tragic death of her mum. There she is subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment from her aunt who takes advantage of her plight. But along comes her aunts younger brother who falls in love with ebele. But would ebeles aunt let her brother get his way?

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 The Go-Between

Narrated as a memoir, this excellent novel tells the story of one summer at the turn of the century when the narrator was a young boy. The boy spends the summer in question as a guest at a country estate where he befriends a local farmer.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 The Assistant

Frank, a troubled, somewhat desperate, Italo-American works long hours in the grocery store of a struggling Jewish family in a Brooklyn neighborhood. He develops a secret passion for his employer's attractive daughter.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Winter garden

Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 Ice

Anna Kavan's books have established her reputation as one of the most talented and original contemporary writers - comparable in stature to Virginia Woolf, Anais Nin and Djuna Barnes. A man's search for an elusive girl takes place against a backdrop of nuclear war resulting in total destruction by walls of ice that overrun the world.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Erasure

Thelonius "Monk" Ellison is an erudite, accomplished but seldom-read author who insists on writing obscure literary papers rather than the so-called "ghetto prose" that would make him a commercial success.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 砂の女

砂丘へ昆虫採集に出かけた男が、砂穴の底に埋もれていく一軒家に閉じ込められる。考えつく限りの方法で脱出を試みる男。家を守るために、男を穴の中にひきとめておこうとする女。そして、穴の上から男の逃亡を妨害し、二人の生活を眺める村の人々。ドキュメンタルな手法、サスペンスあふれる展開のうちに、人間存在の極限の姿を追求した長編。20数ヶ国語に翻訳されている。読売文学賞受賞作。(解説・ドナルド・キーン)

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Cinta Tak Pernah Tepat Waktu

Adalah sebuah novel. Novel ini berkisah tentang pergolakan pemikiran, goncangan batin, pencarian cinta, dan upaya untuk menyembuhkan diri dari penyakit yang diderita oleh sang tokoh utama. Ia terus pergi dan melangkah, berharap semua luka yang dideritanya dapat kering oleh jarak yang tertempuh dan sembuh karena waktu.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Jayber Crow

"Jayber Crow, born in Goforth, Kentucky, orphaned at age ten, began his search as a "pre-ministerial student" at Pigeonville College.". "Eventually, after the flood of 1937, Jayber becomes the barber of the small community of Port William, Kentucky.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Character-Driven Fiction

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📘 Fly away

A follow-up to "Firefly Lane" returns readers to the world of Tully, Kate, and Tully's mother, who explore their understandings about love, family, loss, and redemption while turning to each other in the hopes of salvaging their lives.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 Before the fact

"Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer." Johnny was delightful—and Lina loved him desperately. But his devastating charm was combined with a complete lack of both morals and income.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Waiting

For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young. Every year he visits her in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 Lunar Park

Bret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is a writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed he found himself adrift in a world of wealth, drugs, and fame, as well as dealing with the unexpected death of his abusive father.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Night road

"For eighteen years, Jude Farraday has put her children's needs above her own, and it shows-her twins, Mia and Zach-are bright and happy teenagers. When Lexi Baill moves into their small, close knit community, no one is more welcoming than Jude. Lexi, a former foster child with a dark past, quickly becomes Mia's best friend.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 The Storyteller

Sage Singer becomes friends with an old man who is particularly beloved in her community after they strike up a conversation at the bakery where she works. Josef Weber is everyone's favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. One day he asks Sage for a favor, to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses, but then he tells her he deserves to die.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Hold Still

An arresting story about starting over after a friend's suicide, froma breakthrough new voice in YA fictiondear caitlin, there are so many things that i want so badly to tell you but i just can't.Devastating, hopeful, hopeless, playful...in words and illustrations, Ingrid left behind a painful farewell in her journal for Caitlin.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 The Lake

While *The Lake* shows off many of the features that have made Banana Yoshimoto famous—a cast of vivid and quirky characters, simple yet nuanced prose, a tight plot with an upbeat pace—it’s also one of the most darkly mysterious books she’s ever written.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Bailey's Cafe

"Welcome to Bailey's Cafe, the most mythically real eating place you've ever walked into. Presided over by Bailey himself and his helpmate, Nadine, it is a magnet that draws a wide variety of society's detritus, each with her own story to tell.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Drag king dreams

A veteran of the women's and gay movement of the past 30 years, Max's mid-life crisis hits in the midst of the post-9/11 world. Max is lonely and uncertain about her future -- fearful, in fact, of America's future with its War on Terror and War in Iraq -- with only a core group of friends to turn to for reassurance.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Social Psychology Fiction

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📘 Unless

Reta Winters has many reasons to be happy. Then in the spring of her forty-fourth year, all the quiet satisfactions of her well-lived life disappear in a moment: her eldest daughter Norah suddenly runs from the family and ends up mute and begging on a Toronto street corner with a hand-lettered sign reading GOODNESS around her neck.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Elizabeth Is Missing

"Elizabeth is missing", reads the note in Maud's pocket in her own handwriting. Lately, Maud's been getting forgetful. She keeps buying peach slices when she has a cupboard full, forgets to drink the cups of tea she's made and writes notes to remind herself of things.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Cosmopolis

Eric Packer, a 28-year-old asset manager, embarks on a frenetic journey to the barbershop in New York, caught up in a series of unexpected events and encounters with experts in security, technology, finance, and more.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Everyman

"The fate of Roth's everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Getting to happy

Take a look in the mirror if you don't like what you see then pick a new outfit. It's not always easy to find someone that can be a real friend, someone that will tell you the truth. These ladies has just that a friendship that will take them thru.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 The gargoyle

An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of timeThe narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Good Material

Every relationship has one beginning. This one has two endings. Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . 1. Without a home 2. Waiting for his stand-up career to take off 3. Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Relationship Drama

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📘 The mulberry tree

She had a perfect life. Then she got a real life…. For nearly twenty years, quiet, unassuming Lillian Manville has devoted herself to her self-made billionaire husband — and enjoyed a luxurious life of splendid homes, trips, jewels, and clothes.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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📘 Sleep Has His House

Since her death in 1968, there has been a strong revival of interest in Anna Kavan's work. Sleep Has His House, combining autobiography with surrealist experimentation, deserves to rank with the author's best works. In her foreword Anna Kavan writes: 'Life is tension or the result of tension; without tension the creative impulse cannot exist.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Character-Driven Fiction

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📘 Back roads

"Harley Altmyer, the heartbreaking and lovable hero of Tawni O'Dell's debut novel, should be in college drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three beloved but unruly younger sisters.

Genre: Psychological Fiction Subgenre: Psychological Drama

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