18 books like Three came home

What to read after Three came home — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Wild Swans Jung Chang · 1989 · ★ 4.3 · 729p · ≈ 24h · Moderate "Jung Chang vividly evokes China's sights, sounds, and smells to create what must be one of the grimmest, yet most perceptive accounts of growing up middle-class in the maelstrom that has swept China since the 1920s." - Back cover. Shares: Biography & Memoir, History

Enormous Room E. E. Cummings · 1949 · 248p · ≈ 8h · Challenging "Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1962), famously known as E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, essayist, painter, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous paintings and drawings. He is remembered as an unsurpassed voice of 20th century poetry, as well as one of the most popular, even today.… Shares: American Personal narratives, Concentration Camps, World War, Biography & Memoir

Se questo è un uomo Primo Levi · 1947 · ★ 4.5 · 216p · ≈ 7h · Challenging This book describes Primo Levi's experiences in the concentration camp at Auschwitz during the Second World War. Levi, then a 25-year-old chemist, spent 10 months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his shipment, Levi was one of only twenty who left the camp alive. The average life expectancy of a new entry was three months. This truly amazing… Shares: Prisoners of war, Concentration Camps, Personal narratives, World War II

To Hell and Back Audie Murphy · 1949 · ★ 4.3 · 274p · ≈ 9h · Challenging An autobiographical account of the author of his World War II experiences in the European Theater of War. 2nd Lt. Audie Murphy (1925-1971) was the USA's most decorated WW2 soldier, and lied about his age to join the army. This book became a bestseller, and was the basis of the successful movie in which Murphy (who later became an actor) played himself. Shares: American Personal narratives, World War II, World War, Biography & Memoir

Works (La tregua / Se questo è un uomo) Primo Levi · 1963 · ★ 4.4 · 397p · ≈ 13h · Moderate The author's survival in Auschwitz and his travels through Eastern Europe and Russia are the subjects of this memoir. Shares: Prisoners of war, Personal narratives, World War II, World War

Andersonville; a story of rebel military prisons John McElroy · 1879 · 624p · ≈ 20h · Demanding "McElroy, with a detachment of his regiment, was guarding a supply route to Cumberland Gap when his entire company was captured in a surprise attack one morning during the winter of 1862-63. He and his comrades were taken to Lippy Prison, and from there they were sent to Andersonville. McElroy spent the rest of the war as a prisoner. His story of attempts at escape, of comrades tracked through… Shares: Prisoners of war, Personal narratives, Biography & Memoir, History

Obasan Joy Kogawa · 1981 · ★ 3.8 · 250p · ≈ 8h · Moderate 224 pages; 21 cm Shares: Concentration Camps, World War II, World War

City of gold Len Deighton · 1992 · ★ 3.6 · 576p · ≈ 19h · Moderate "The pace of the story is compulsive . . . it is a real pleasure to be swallowed up in Deighton's description of wartime Cairo."—Daily TelegraphJanuary 1942. Rommel, the fabled "Desert Fox," has pushed back the British Army three hundred miles in a matter of weeks. His seemingly invincible Afrika Korps is at the gates of Egypt, soon to threaten Cairo itself. And Rommel has a spy in the city—a… Shares: World War II, World War

Rule Of Law Dexter Dias · 1997 · ★ 4.4 · 483p · ≈ 16h · Moderate 'The Rule of Law' is a phrase much used but little examined. The idea of the rule of law as the foundation of modern states and civilisations has recently become even more talismanic than that of democracy, but what does it actually consist of? In this brilliant short book, Britain's former senior law lord, and one of the world's most acute legal minds, examines what the idea actually means. He… Shares: Concentration Camps, World War II

The Tenth Man Graham Greene · 1985 · ★ 3.7 · 155p · ≈ 5h · Moderate In a prison in occupied France one in every ten men is to be shot. The prisoners draw lots among themselves - and for rich lawyer Louis Chavel, it seems that his whole life has been leading up to an agonizing and crucial failure of nerve. Shares: Prisoners of war, World War II

The Narrow Road to the Deep North Richard Flanagan · 2000 · ★ 4.0 · 464p · ≈ 15h · Moderate The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a love story unfolding over half a century between a doctor and his uncle’s wife. Taking its title from one of the most famous books in Japanese literature, written by the great haiku poet Basho, Flanagan’s novel has as its heart one of the most infamous episodes of Japanese history, the construction of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in World War II. In… Shares: Prisoners of war, World War II, World War, History

Recollections of an old soldier Capt. David Perry (b. 1741) · 1822 · 64p · ≈ 2h · Challenging As they were in those days, the full title of Capt David Perry's book is its own description: Recollections of an old soldier. The life of Captain David Perry, a soldier of the French and revolutionary wars, containing many extraordinary occurrences relating to his own private history, and an account of some interesting events in the history of the times in which he lived, no-where else… Shares: Personal narratives, Biography & Memoir, History

Barefoot Gen Vol. 4, Barefoot Gen Vol. 5 (Splitting Works needed) 中沢 啓治 · 1978 · ★ 5.0 · 284p · ≈ 9h · Moderate In this graphic depiction of nuclear devastation, three survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima--Gen, his mother, and his baby sister--face rejection, hunger, and humiliation in their search for a place to live. Shares: Personal narratives, World War II, World War, History

Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon · 1973 · ★ 4.0 · 1160p · ≈ 38h · Challenging Winner of the National Book Award"The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II." —The New Republic“A screaming comes across the sky. . .” A few months after the Germans’ secret V-2 rocket bombs begin falling on London, British Intelligence discovers that a map of the city pinpointing the sexual conquests of one Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop, U.S. Army, corresponds… Shares: World War II, World War, Biography & Memoir, History

Архипелаг ГУЛАГ Александр Солженицын · 1970 · ★ 4.6 · 660p · ≈ 22h · Moderate The Gulag Archipelago is Solzhenitsyn's masterwork, a vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators and also of heroism, a Stalinist anti-world at the heart of the Soviet Union where the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair. The work is based on the testimony of some two hundred survivors, and on the recollection of… Shares: Concentration Camps, Biography & Memoir, History

King Rat James Clavell · 1950 · ★ 4.2 · 371p · ≈ 12h · Moderate The time is World War II. The place is a brutal prison camp deep in Japanese-occupied territory. Here, within the seething mass of humanity, one man, an American corporal, seeks dominance over both captives and captors alike. His weapons are human courage, unblinking understanding of human weaknesses, and total willingness to exploit every opportunity to enlarge his power and corrupt or destroy… Shares: Prisoners of war, World War II

The Silence of Ghosts Jonathan Aycliffe · 2013 · 202p · ≈ 6h · Moderate "Dominic Lancaster hoped to prove himself to his family by excelling in the Navy during World War II. Instead he is wounded while serving as a gunner and loses his leg. Still recovering from his wounds and the trauma of his amputation when the Blitz begins, Dominic finds himself shuffled off to the countryside by his family, along with his partially deaf sister, Octavia. The crumbling family… Shares: World War II, World War

Schindler's List Thomas Keneally · 1982 · ★ 4.4 · 400p · ≈ 13h · Moderate Winner of the Booker Prize Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction Schindler's List is a remarkable work of fiction based on the true story of German industrialist and war profiteer, Oskar Schindler, who, confronted with the horror of the extermination camps, gambled his life and fortune to rescue 1,300 Jews from the gas chambers. Working with the actual testimony of… Shares: Concentration Camps, World War II, World War

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