Books like 'The Praise Singer'
Readers who enjoyed The Praise Singer by Mary Renault also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
28 ratingsAt Thermopylae, a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece, the feared and admired Spartan soldiers stood three hundred strong. Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army.Day after bloody day they withstood the terrible onslaught, buying time for the Greeks to rally their forces... -
D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths by Ingri d'Aulaire, Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
25 ratingsHere are the gods, goddesses, and legendary figures of ancient Greece--mighty Zeus, with his fistful of thunderbolts; gray-eyed Athena, goddess of wisdom; Helios, the sun; greedy King Midas--lavishly depicted by Caldecott winners Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire... -
രണ്ടാമൂഴം | Randamoozham by M.T. Vasudevan Nair
20 ratingsRandamoozham is the masterpiece of Jnanpith winning writer M. T. Vasudevan Nair. It was translated into English as Second Turn in 1997. M. T. Vasudevan Nair won Vayalar Award, given for the best literary work in Malayalam, for the novel in 1985. Later, in the year 1995, Mr. Nair was awarded the highest literary award in India, Jnanpith Award, for his overall contribution to Malayalam literature... -
Aztec by Gary Jennings
25 ratingsAztec is the extraordinary story of the last and greatest native civilization of North America... -
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The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso, Tim Parks
14 ratingsPresenting the stories of Zeus and Europa, Theseus and Ariadne, the birth of Athens and the fall of Troy, in all their variants, Calasso also uncovers the distant origins of secrets and tragedy, virginity, and rape. "A perfect work like no other. (Calasso) has re-created . . . the morning of our world."--Gore Vidal. 15 engravings...Categorized as:
ancient-civilization classics historical-fiction literary-fiction myths 20th-century adult book -
Tales from Ovid by Ovid
16 ratingsWhen Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun's ground-breaking anthology After Ovid (also Faber) was published in 1995, Hughes's three contributions to the collective effort were nominated by most critics as outstanding...Categorized as:
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Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke
16 ratingsTo Rilke himself the Sonnets to Orpheus were "perhaps the most mysterious in the way they came up and entrusted themselves to me, the most enigmatic dictation I have ever held through and achieved; the whole first part was written down in a single breathless act of obedience, between the 2nd and 5th of February, without one word being doubtful or having to be changed." With facing-page German... -
The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges, George Guidall
18 ratings"The Garden of Forking Paths" (original Spanish title: "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan") is the title story in the collection El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941), which was republished in its entirety in Ficciones (Fictions) in 1944... -
The House of Asterion by Jorge Luis Borges
6 ratingsOne of Borges's shortest stories, The House of Asterion was written over a period of two days. The story explores themes of death, redemption, and the nature of monstrosity. Its narrative style has been referred to as a "literary puzzle", with the narrator's identity not fully revealed until the end of the story... -
The Atlas of Middle-Earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad
24 ratingsKaren Wynn Fonstad's THE ATLAS OF MIDDLE-EARTH is an essential volume that will enchant all Tolkien fans. Here is the definitive guide to the geography of Middle-earth, from its founding in the Elder Days through the Third Age, including the journeys of Bilbo, Frodo, and the Fellowship of the Ring...Categorized as:
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The Garden of the Departed Cats by Bilge Karasu
10 ratingsIn an ancient Mediterranean city, a tradition is maintained: every ten years an archaic game of human chess is staged, the players (visitors versus locals) bearing weapons. This archaic game, the central event of The Garden of the Departed Cats, may prove as fatal as the deadly attraction our narrator feels for the local man who is the Vizier, or Captain, of the home team...Categorized as:
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Ken Follett Epic Historical Collection by Ken Follett, Joachim Kerzel
10 ratingsEpic Historical Collection Ken Follett Dive into the #1 New York Times bestselling author's masterpiece of medieval drama, The Pillars of the Earth, and its long-awaited sequel, World Without End... -
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic by Alberto Manguel, Gianni Guadalupi
12 ratingsFrom Atlantis to Xanadu and beyond, this Baedeker of make-believe takes readers on a tour of more than 1,200 realms invented by storytellers from Homer's day to our own. Here you will find Shangri-La and El Dorado; Utopia and Middle Earth; Wonderland and Freedonia. Here too are Jurassic Park, Salman Rushdie's Sea of Stories, and the fabulous world of Harry Potter... -
Hell Screen by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
12 ratings"There can be no doubt that Akutagawa had more individuality than any other writer of his time and has left in Japanese literature a mass of artistic work, often grotesque and curious, that, while it undoubtedly angers the proletarian experimenters who now hold the stage and fight with lusty pens and a highly developed class consciousness against all that he stood for, will continue to live as...Categorized as:
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The Deer and the Cauldron: The First Book by Jin Yong
6 ratingsOn the Dragon Throne of China sits the young Manchu Emperor Kang Xi. Back in 1644, his great-uncle Dorgon broke through the Great Wall from Manchuria in the north-east and took the Imperial capital, Peking. Now twenty years later, the Manchus are quelling the last sparks of Chinese resistance, hounding down members of the underground movement known as the Triad Secret Society... -
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis
8 ratingsA continuation of Homer’s epic poem, Kazantzakis’s own Odyssey finds Odysseus once again leaving Ithaca on finding that the satisfactions of home and hearth are not as he remembered them... -
Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright
8 ratingsAustin Tappan Wright left the world a wholly unsuspected legacy. After he died in a tragic accident, among this distinguished legal scholar's papers were found thousands of pages devoted to a staggering feat of literary creationa detailed history of an imagined country complete with geography, genealogy, literature, language and culture. As detailed as J.R.R...Categorized as:
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Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida by Robert Chandler, Various
8 ratingsFrom the reign of the Tsars in the early 19th century to the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond, the short story has long occupied a central place in Russian culture... -
The Singer: A Classic Retelling of Cosmic Conflict by Calvin Miller
10 ratingsThe Singer quickly became a favorite of evangelists, pastors, artists, students, teachers and readers of all sorts when it was originally published in 1975... -
The Book of Devices by İhsan Oktay Anar
16 ratings"He had sought to be the agent of all forces and actions on the Earth, and thus, just as he had transformed iron ingot into a music box, so had he strived to transform the Earth and all it contained into a machine." Ihsan Oktay Anar's 1996 novella, "The Book of Devices," is a skeleton key to the ever-inventive author's fictional world set in the Ottoman times...Categorized as:
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Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić
18 ratingsA national bestseller, Dictionary of the Khazars was cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of the year...Categorized as:
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Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz
18 ratingsA renowned Nobel Prize-winning novelist refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade in his own imaginative, spellbinding style. Here are genies and flying carpets, Aladdin and Sinbad, Ali Baba, and many other familiar stories, made new by the magical pen of the acknowledged dean of Arabic letters... -
The Glory of the Empire: A Novel, a History by Jean d'Ormesson
6 ratingsThe Glory of the Empire is the rich and absorbing history of an extraordinary empire, at one point a rival to Rome... -
Five Plays: Antigone, Eurydice, The Ermine, The Rehearsal, Romeo and Jeannette by Jean Anouilh
6 ratingsThe great French playwright Jean Anouilh (1910-87) wrote both "pink" bittersweet comedies and "black" tragic dramas. Jean Anouilh Five Plays—the finest English-language anthology of his works—crackles with both his sharp wit and his icy cynicism... -
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Flanders by Patricia Anthony
6 ratings"A harrowing and beautiful novel, demonstrating — again — that Patricia Anthony is one of our great writers." — Publishers WeeklyIn this gritty look at World War I's trench warfare, a young American sharpshooter ventures into no man's land each night to be ready by daybreak for the grim business of slaying record numbers of enemies...Categorized as:
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A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
6 ratingsFirst published in 1932, here is John Cowper Powys's masterwork, an epic novel of terrific cumulative force and lyrical intensity...Categorized as:
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The Holly Groweth Green by Amy Rae Durreson
6 ratingsIt’s Christmas 1946 and wounded doctor Laurence is struggling to find a way to live during peacetime. Lost in the Hampshire countryside on a snowy Christmas Eve, Laurence stumbles across lonely Mistletoe Cottage and its owner: Avery. Avery is bright and beautiful, welcoming Laurence to his home with warmth and joy. But Laurence can’t stay forever, and Avery’s secrets mean he can never leave... -
Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov by Robert Chandler, Aleksandr Afanasyev
6 ratingsFor fans of fairy tales and the literary supernatural: a unique collection of Russian short stories from the last 200 years In these folk tales, young women go on long and perilous quests, wicked stepmothers turn children into geese, and tsars ask dangerous riddles, with help or hindrance from magical dolls, cannibal witches, talking skulls, stolen wives, and brothers disguised as wise birds...Categorized as:
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The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic by Nick Joaquín, Gina Apostol
6 ratingsNick Joaquin is widely considered one of the greatest Filipino writers, but he has remained little-known outside his home country despite writing in English. With the post-colonial sensibilities of Junot Diaz, Teju Cole, and Jhumpa Lahiri and an ironic perspective of colonial history resonant with Marques and Llosa, Joaquin is a long-neglected writer ready to join the ranks of the world classics...Categorized as:
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Helen in Egypt by H.D.
8 ratingsThe fabulous beauty of Helen of Troy is legendary. But some say that Helen was never in Troy, that she had been conveyed by Zeus to Egypt, and that Greeks and Trojans alike fought for an illusion. A fifty-line fragment by the poet Stesichorus of Sicily (c. 640-555 B.C.), what survives of his Pallinode, tells us almost all we know of this other Helen, and from it H. D. wove her book-length poem... -
The White Deer by James Thurber
8 ratingsHere is a Thurber world of enchanted deer and seven-headed dragons, of wizards and witches, of riddles and spells, of false love and true. It is the story of a beautiful princess, transformed from a deer, who assigns each of three princes a perilous labor to perform in order to win her hand. Drawings by the Author... -
The Swedish Cavalier by Leo Perutz, J. Maxwell Brownjohn
10 ratingsMuch admired by such disparate writers as Ian Fleming, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Graham Greene, Leo Perutz has won international recognition as a master storyteller and "a great modern writer" ( Philadelphia Inquirer)...Categorized as:
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The Golden Fleece by Robert Graves
10 ratingsAlong with I, Claudius, The Golden Fleece is considered one of Robert Graves's most exciting and transporting historical novels. The Golden Fleece was at one time the most sacred religious object of the ancient Greeks, and had been sent away as the result of a power struggle between the Greeks and earlier inhabitants of the Greek peninsula... -
Ka by Roberto Calasso, Els van der Pluym
10 ratingsWith The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Calasso turned ancient legends into modern literature and created a postmodern novel out of the ancient myths of classical Greece...in Ka, Calasso attempts to do the same with the far more sprawling and elusive corpus of classical Sanskritt literature...The result is a book as brilliantly original as anything I have ever read on Hinduism.. -
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Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff
14 ratingsThis brilliant reconception of the Arthurian epic cuts through the familiar myths and tells the story of the real King Arthur: Artos the Bear, the mighty warrior-king who saved the last lights of Western civilization when the barbarian darkness descended in the fifth century...Categorized as:
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The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault
16 ratingsIn this sequel to The King Must Die Theseus defies the Gods’ and claims the throne of Athens a move that culminates in the terrible, fateful destruction of the house of Minos -- the Minotaur...Categorized as:
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The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green
24 ratingsRobin Hood is champion of the poor and oppressed by 12th-century England against the cruel power of Prince John and the brutal Sheriff of Nottingham. He takes refuge with his Merrie Men in the vast Sherwood Forest, emerging time and again to outwit his enemies with daring and panache. This book presents the story of social justice and cunning... -
The King Must Die by Mary Renault
20 ratings“Mary Renault is a shining light to both historical novelists and their readers. She does not pretend the past is like the present, or that the people of ancient Greece were just like us. She shows us their strangeness; discerning, sure-footed, challenging our values, piquing our curiosity, she leads us through an alien landscape that moves and delights us...Categorized as:
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The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
18 ratingsIn The Last of the Wine, two young Athenians, Alexias and Lysis, compete in the palaestra, journey to the Olympic games, fight in the wars against Sparta, and study under Socrates. As their relationship develops, Renault expertly conveys Greek culture, showing the impact of this supreme philosopher whose influence spans epochs...Categorized as:
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Funeral Games by Mary Renault
16 ratingsAs Funeral Games opens, Alexander the Great lies dying. Around his body gather the generals, the provincial satraps and the royal wives, already competing for the prizes of power and land. Only Bagoas, the Persian boy mourning in the shadows, wants nothing...Categorized as:
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The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault
14 ratingsSet in fourth-century B.C. Greece, The Mask of Apollo is narrated by Nikeratos, a tragic actor who takes with him on all his travels a gold mask of Apollo, a relic of the theater's golden age, which is now past...Categorized as:
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Landscape Painted with Tea by Milorad Pavić
14 ratingsBy the author of the highly acclaimed literary bestseller Dictionary of the Khazars, this is a tale of a mysterious quest that is part modern Odyssey and part crossword puzzle. It begins with the story of a brilliant but failed architect in Belgrade and his search for his father, an officer who vanished in Greece during World War II...Categorized as:
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The Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France
14 ratingsNobel Prize laureate Anatole France's The Revolt of the Angels, often considered his most profound novel, tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d'Esparvieu, who falls in love and joins the revolutionary movement of angels. Originally published in 1914...Categorized as:
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Damascus Nights by Rafik Schami
14 ratingsRafik Schami's award-winning novel. In the classical Arab tradition of tale-telling, here is a magical book that celebrates the power of storytelling, delightfully transformed for modern sensibilities by an award-winning author. The time is present-day Damascus, and Salim the coachman, the city's most famous storyteller, is mysteriously struck dumb...Categorized as:
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Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith by Gina B. Nahai
12 ratingsWhen she is five years old, Lili, the narrator of this epic and magical tale, watches her mother, Roxanna the Angel, throw herself off the balcony of their house on the Avenue of Faith. Roxanna has left no farewell, no explanation. Her family's subsequent search for her reveals no body. no sign of a fall, no trace of an escape...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book female-author fiction historical -
Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel
12 ratingsBased, like the earlier Impressions of Africa, on uniquely eccentric principles of composition, this book invites the reader to enter a world which in its innocence and extravagance is unlike anything in the literature of the twentieth century... -
The Praise Singer by Mary Renault
12 ratingsIn the story of the great lyric poet Simonides, Mary Renault brings alive a time in Greece when tyrants kept an unsteady rule and poetry, music, and royal patronage combined to produce a flowering of the arts. Born into a stern farming family on the island of Keos, Simonides escapes his harsh childhood through a lucky apprenticeship with a renowned Ionian singer...Categorized as:
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Collected Novellas by Gabriel García Márquez
12 ratings"García Márquez has extraordinary strength and firmness of imagination and writes with the calmness of a man who knows exactly what wonders he can perform."--Alfred Kazin, New York Times Book ReviewRenowned as a master of magical realism, Gabriel García Márquez has long delighted readers around the world with his exquisitely crafted prose...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies fiction historical literary -
Damascus Nights by Rafik Schami
12 ratingsIn the classical Arab tradition of tale-telling, here is a magical book that celebrates the power of storytelling, delightfully transformed for modern sensibilities by an award-winning author.The time is present-day Damascus, and Salim the coachman, the city's most famous storyteller, is mysteriously struck dumb... -
The Sibyl by Pär Lagerkvist
12 ratings4 K- Blackstone Exclusive This Nobel Prize-winning author here explores the meaning of divine and human love, through the characters of a wandering Jew and a sibyl of Delphi. This is a remarkable book...Lagerkvist has written a disturbing and fearful fable about human and divine love, and about the glories and disasters of both...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction myths 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook
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