Hi, I’m looking for reading suggestions. I’m a fan of anything a bit… weird! Surrealist, postmodern, bizarre, I’m all over it. All the better if it addresses larger social or environmental themes through allegory. One of my all time favourite books is Chouette, so if anyone knows a similar read I’d love to know. I’m also a huge fan of poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid form (lyrical essays etc.). I’m especially fond of Didion, Kafka, Vuong. I’ve not explored much short story, so I’d also love some recs for that. TIA!! 🙂
by whynottouchgrass
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Fernando A. Flores. His book Tears of The Trufflepig deals with the border wall, Brother Brontë touches on authoritarianism and the tech industry. Lots of magical realism and surrealist content that doesn’t explain itself. He also has a couple of story collections called Valleyesque and Death to The Bullshit Artists of South Texas. His books tend to be heavily routed in the South Texas region (I only discovered his work because I was trying really hard to read local writers) so might not resonate with everyone, but his work is very strange and I enjoy it!
Fiction:
* In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu. A collection of stories-within a story being told in a fantasy surveillance state. One of the stories is in verse.
* Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai. To be honest, I didn’t really get this, but it definitely seems like a book rich with allegory.
* The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe by D. G. Compton. Lesser known but very well-written postmodernism.
Check out Diane Williams‘ weird short story / prose poem things.
Jorge Luis Borges – Labyrinths
Italo Calvino – If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
George Saunders’s short stories! Try Tenth of December to start with.
Solenoid, by Mircea Cartarescu, a Romanian writer, is a novel that sounds right up your alley. Half is about the ordinary life of a high school teacher in communist-era Romania, and the orher half is a surrealist exploration of his dreams and his fascination with microbes. A really smart and interesting read, though in the end the surrealistic parts were a bit too much for my normie-ish tastes.
I have:
* [“books that feel like wandering through a dream”](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/1luq93p/books_that_feel_like_wandering_through_a_dream/) (r/suggestmeabook; 10:38 ET, 8 July 2025)—Listing for “surreal” and “dream”
Edit: See also:
* [“What’s the weirdest book you’ve ever read?”](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/1q9y0o3/whats_the_weirdest_book_youve_ever_read/) (r/suggestmeabook; 07:20 ET, 11 January 2026)—Updated, inclusive listing
The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe