Recommendations
Books Like The Things They Carried
What to read after The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (1990) is the most important American war writing of its generation — Alpha Company in Vietnam, the question of what fiction can do that facts cannot, and the cargo that soldiers carry home. If you were drawn to its formal invention and its moral seriousness, these novels and memoirs will find you in the same place.
- 1Buy
Going After Cacciato
by Tim O'Brien
O'Brien's earlier Vietnam novel — a soldier fantasizes about walking from Vietnam to the Paris peace talks; more formally experimental than The Things They Carried but the essential companion in his Vietnam fiction; won the National Book Award in 1979
- 2Buy
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
Paul Bäumer on the German Western Front in World War One — the foundational modern anti-war novel; O'Brien belongs to the tradition Remarque established, and reading The Things They Carried after All Quiet shows how the tradition developed across two wars and sixty years
- 3Buy
A Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway
Frederic Henry in World War One Italy — Hemingway's iceberg prose is O'Brien's direct ancestor in American war writing; both novels ask what love means in a context of systematic death, and both understand that war's most important effects are emotional rather than physical
- 4Buy
Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
Yossarian in World War Two Italy — the satirical pole of American war fiction where O'Brien occupies the tragic/lyrical pole; reading the two novels together covers the full range of what American fiction has done with the experience of war
- 5Buy
Matterhorn
by Karl Marlantes
A Marine lieutenant on a remote hilltop firebase in Vietnam — the Vietnam War novel that readers who love The Things They Carried most consistently find compelling; Marlantes was there, and Matterhorn is the most fully realized realistic account of infantry combat in Vietnam in any novel
- 6Buy
The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
A communist spy in the South Vietnamese army at the fall of Saigon — the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that tells the same Vietnam War from the other side; the essential companion to The Things They Carried for readers who want to understand what the war looked like to the Vietnamese
- 7Buy
Apocalypse Now (based on Heart of Darkness)
by Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness — Marlow's journey upriver into the Belgian Congo to find Kurtz; the ancestor of The Things They Carried's understanding of what extreme circumstances do to civilized assumptions; also the source of Apocalypse Now, the film that brought the Vietnam War into the tradition Conrad established
- 8Buy
Redeployment
by Phil Klay
Linked stories about American soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — the most important American war writing since O'Brien, consciously written in the tradition The Things They Carried established; won the National Book Award in 2014
More The Things They Carried Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.