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Joshua Cohen's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Joshua Cohen recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Joshua Cohen's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

1

Nostromo

Joseph Conrad, Jacques Berthoud, Mara Kalnins

3.9
One of the greatest political novels in any language, Nostromo reenacts the establishment of modern capitalism in a remote South American province locked between the Andes and the Pacific. In the harbor town of Sulaco, a vivid cast of characters is caught up in a civil war to decide whether its fabulously wealthy silver mine, funded by American money but owned by a third-generation English immigra
2

The Foundation Pit

Andreĭ Platonovich Platonov

3.9
In Andrey Platonov’s The Foundation Pit, a team of workers has been given the job of digging the foundation of an immense edifice, a palatial home for the perfect future that, they are convinced, is at hand. But the harder the team works, the deeper they dig, the more things go wrong, and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation, but an immense grave.

The Foundation Pit is Platon
The Cleft book cover3

The Cleft

Doris Lessing

3.3
Doris Lessing, one of England's finest novelists, invites us to imagine a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, free from jealousy, free from petty rivalries: a society free from men.
4

The Union Jack

Imre Kertész, Tim Wilkinson

4.0
"It was...unnecessary for me to fret about who the murderer was: Everybody was."

A haunting, never-before-translated, autobiographical novella by the 2002 Nobel Prize winner.

An unnamed narrator recounts a simple anecdote, his sighting of the Union Jack—the British Flag—during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, in the few days preceding the uprising's brutal repression by the Soviet army. In the tel
5

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age

Bohumil Hrabal, Michael Henry Heim, Vladimir Suchanek

3.8
This ebullient, gallivanting novel encapsulates the world vision of the Czech Republic's best-loved author in one tumbling, breathtaking sentence. Saints and sinners, emperors and embezzlers, barmaids and balalaikas all play their part in the bawdy reminiscences of Hrabal's cobbler as he charms an audience of young beauties.