Recommendations
Books Like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Best books to read after Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the most formally ambitious British fantasy of the 21st century — English magic in the Napoleonic era, the Raven King, scholarly footnotes. These recommendations continue the Clarke canon, explore the literary British fantasy tradition, or offer companion reading in the tradition of the serious historical fantasy novel.
- 1Buy
Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke
The essential Clarke companion — shorter and stranger than Jonathan Strange, a puzzle-box mystery in a House of infinite halls and statues, the same author's sensibility in an entirely different form.
- 2Buy
The Ladies of Grace Adieu
by Susanna Clarke
The companion story collection — eight stories in the same alternate-England magical history, expanding the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, illustrated by Charles Vess.
- 3Buy
His Majesty's Dragon
by Naomi Novik
The Napoleonic fantasy companion — Captain Will Laurence and his dragon Temeraire in the Napoleonic Wars, a more action-focused alternate-history fantasy set in the same historical period as Jonathan Strange.
- 4Buy
Susanna Clarke's Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke
The Woman's Prize winner — same author, entirely different mode, the most compact and mysterious thing Clarke has written, demonstrating the range of imagination that Jonathan Strange showed at full scale.
- 5Buy
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
The scholarly footnoted historical mystery — William of Baskerville in a fourteenth-century Italian monastery, Eco's novel sharing Jonathan Strange's commitment to a fully realized historical world and its use of footnotes as a narrative device.
- 6Buy
Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel
The most celebrated British historical novel of the twenty-first century — Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII, Mantel's formal ambition and her commitment to making the historical world feel fully present sharing Clarke's same qualities.
- 7Buy
The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
The literary fantasy companion — Quentin Coldwater at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, Grossman's novel deliberately engaging with the Narnia and Harry Potter traditions of magical education in a realistic adult register, sharing Jonathan Strange's literary self-consciousness.
- 8Buy
American Gods
by Neil Gaiman
The mythological literary fantasy companion — Shadow Moon in a war between old gods and new, Gaiman at his most serious, sharing Jonathan Strange's commitment to the internal logic of a world where the supernatural is real and has cultural and historical consequences.
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