What are the top suggestions for books matching 'powerful and tragic'?

Considered by many the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is Erich Maria Remarque's masterpiece of the German experience during World War I.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death,... Read more about All Quiet on the Western Front

We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans. We are satisfied and at peace. Each man has another mess-tin full for th...

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THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a "strong man" of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and ... Read more about Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinz...

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Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched... Read more about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

She dips a nod at me as she goes past. I let the mop push me back to the wall and smile and try to foul her equipment up as much as possible by not letting her see my eyes—they can’t tell so much abou...

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In this "urgently relevant"* collection featuring the landmark essay "The Case for Reparations," the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me "reflects on race, Barack Obama's presidency and its jarring aftermath"*-including the... Read more about We Were Eight Years in Power

This story began, as all writing must, in failure. It was February 2007. I was seated in a state office building on 125th Street, not far from the Jamaican patty joint, not far from the fried fish spo...

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From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of All Your Perfects and It Ends With Us comes the beginning of Sky and Dean's passionate love story-where well-kept secrets threaten to opens wounds of a dark past.

Would you rather know a truth that mak... Read more about Hopeless

I’d like to think most of the decisions I’ve made throughout my seventeen years have been smart ones. Hopefully intelligence is measured by weight, and the few dumb decisions I’ve made will be outweig...

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Wall Street Journal, "Favorite Books of the Year 2013" Cosmopolitan, "Best Books of the Year for Women" Library Journal, "Best Books of 2013" Salon, "Best Books of 2013" "Haunting...

more than a beautifully written memoir. [A] powerful and raw love l... Read more about Her

I forgot who I was after my sister died. I tried to remind myself with a trinity mantra. I whispered my mantra to the woman who stared back at me in my morning mirror: I’m twinless. I’m a photographer...

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The Hollywood where Sammy Santos lives is not one of glitz and glitter, but a barrio at the edge of a small New Mexico town. In the summer before his senior year, Sammy falls in love with the beautiful, independent, and intensely vulnerable Juliana. ... Read more about Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

I remember her eyes, the gray of a sky about to let loose a storm. I remember the way she placed her finger on her bottom lip when she was lost in thoughts as dark as her eyes. I’d have given anything...

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There are few more convincing, less sentimental accounts of passionate love than the story of the tormented Heathcliff, who falls wildly in love with Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of his benefactor, and of the violence and misery that result from ... Read more about Wuthering Heights

1801.—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have f...

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Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the... Read more about The Song of Achilles

MY FATHER WAS A KING AND THE SON OF KINGS. HE was a short man, as most of us were, and built like a bull, all shoulders. He married my mother when she was fourteen and sworn by the priestess to be fru...

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It's 1939 in Molching, Germany, and horror is everywhere. Nazi rule has divided the nation into those who are brutalized and those who are merely oppressed. Hunger, fear, and isolation reign. There are stories here, and who better to tell them than D... Read more about The Book Thief

When the coughing stopped, there was nothing but the nothingness of life moving on with a shuffle, or a near-silent twitch. A suddenness found its way onto his lips then, which were a corroded brown c...

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