If you liked
Books like The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai
The Great Believers is Rebecca Makkai's Pulitzer Prize finalist about the 1980s AIDS crisis in Chicago and 2015 Paris. The parallel-timeline structure and the survivor-generation inheritance question are what make it work. If you finished it and needed more reading in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
A Little Lifeby Hanya Yanagihara
“A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 2015 review. Four college friends in New York, slowly narrowing onto Jude St. Francis and what childhood trauma does to the rest of an adult life. Man Booker Prize shortlist and the most-discussed contemporary American doorstop.”
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeousby Ocean Vuong
“On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 2019 review. A young Vietnamese-American man writes a letter to his illiterate mother about his Hartford childhood and the OxyContin crisis that takes his first love. Vuong's debut novel.”
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugoby Taylor Jenkins Reid
“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid 2017 review. An aging Hollywood icon agrees to tell the true story of her career and her seven marriages, but only to an unknown journalist. The TikTok-era literary fiction novel that defined contemporary Hollywood-memoir-fiction.”
My Brilliant Friendby Elena Ferrante
“My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante 2012 review. Two girls grow up in a poor neighborhood of 1950s Naples. The first Neapolitan Novel and one of the canonical contemporary European literary novels.”
The Goldfinchby Donna Tartt
“The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 2013 review. Theo Decker, thirteen, survives a Metropolitan Museum bombing that kills his mother and ends up with a stolen painting that defines the next decade of his life. Pulitzer Prize 2014.”
Cold Mountainby Charles Frazier
“Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 1997 review. A wounded Confederate deserter walks across the Civil-War-era Carolinas to return home. National Book Award 1997 and the basis for the 2003 Minghella film.”
FAQ
Common questions about The Great Believers read-alikes
- What is the closest match for The Great Believers?
- A Little Life. Hanya Yanagihara's sustained literary novel about long-term male friendship and the limits of recovery from trauma works in close conversation with Makkai's Chicago AIDS-crisis material. The two novels handle adjacent subjects at different scales.
- I want more Rebecca Makkai.
- I Have Some Questions for You (2023, the academic-thriller follow-up) is the obvious next read. The Hundred-Year House (2014) and The Borrower (2011) are the earlier novels.
- I want more contemporary AIDS-era literary work.
- The catalog is light on this specific subgenre. Outside the catalog, Garth Greenwell (What Belongs to You), Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance), and Edmund White (The Beautiful Room Is Empty) are the canonical contemporary literary picks. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous handles the OxyContin-era follow-on epidemic in adjacent literary territory.
- I want another parallel-timeline literary novel.
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (1950s-Hollywood and present-day journalism), My Brilliant Friend (1950s and present-day Naples), and The Goldfinch (post-Met-bombing childhood and adult fugitive years). All three handle parallel-timeline construction in different ways.
The original