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15 Authors like Bruno Schulz

If you enjoy reading books by Bruno Schulz then you might also like the following authors:

  1. Franz Kafka

    Kafka writes surreal, dream-like stories filled with absurdity and strange humor. His characters often face bizarre, nightmarish situations that reflect deep anxieties about existence and authority.

    If you enjoyed Schulz's imaginative storytelling, you'll likely appreciate Kafka's classic tale, The Metamorphosis, where the protagonist wakes up one morning transformed into a giant insect.

  2. Danilo Kiš

    Kiš blends history, memory, and imagination in stories that explore identity, loss, and the passage of time. Like Schulz, Kiš evokes mysterious and poetic worlds.

    Check out A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, a powerful collection of stories about fate, oppression, and the complicated workings of memory.

  3. Isaac Babel

    Babel creates sharp, vivid, and sometimes brutal stories rich with imagery and emotion. His writing centers on dark realism, depicting intense, chaotic experiences.

    Fans of Schulz's rich style might enjoy Babel's collection Red Cavalry, which captures his unsettling experiences during the Soviet-Polish war in short, powerful vignettes.

  4. Robert Walser

    Walser's writing is gentle, whimsical, and filled with quiet humor, often portraying characters who wander through the world, observing and daydreaming. Like Schulz, his narratives have a sense of childlike wonder and melancholy.

    Try his novel, Jakob von Gunten, about a sensitive student who reflects thoughtfully—and sometimes comically—on life at a strange school.

  5. Alfred Kubin

    Kubin delivers darkly imaginative worlds filled with surreal landscapes and unsettling dream logic. He explores fears, obsessions, and subconscious realms in ways reminiscent of Schulz's fascination with strange, otherworldly spaces.

    In The Other Side, Kubin builds a nightmare city where dreams and reality become dangerously intertwined.

  6. Jorge Luis Borges

    Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges is famous for his imaginative and philosophical approach to storytelling. His short stories often explore themes like infinity, mirrors, labyrinths, and the shifting nature of reality.

    Borges uses precise language and intriguing ideas to make readers think. His collection, Ficciones, highlights these themes, featuring stories like The Garden of Forking Paths, which reveals multiple layers of meaning hidden within unusual plots and paradoxes.

  7. Leonora Carrington

    British-Mexican artist and writer Leonora Carrington blends surreal imagery, humor, and fantasy to create unique and mysterious worlds. Her stories blur lines between reality, dreams, and myth, often exploring women's experiences and inner lives.

    Her novel The Hearing Trumpet follows an elderly woman's entry into a fantastical community, mixing playful absurdity and magical imagination.

  8. Bohumil Hrabal

    Czech author Bohumil Hrabal writes vivid, playful, and deeply human stories that capture life's humor, sadness, and absurdity. His novels often feature ordinary people in everyday situations, filled with colorful characters and funny, sometimes poignant observations.

    In his novel Too Loud a Solitude, we follow a humble worker who compacts waste paper for a living and secretly saves rare books, highlighting the power of literature in even the most ordinary lives.

  9. Witold Gombrowicz

    Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz uses humor and satire to examine social expectations, identity, and the tension between individuals and society. His sharp, provocative fiction questions tradition, established forms, and our tendency toward conformity.

    One of his novels, Ferdydurke, critiques society's obsession with appearances and highlights how absurd human relationships can be.

  10. Mikhail Bulgakov

    Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov masterfully combines satire and fantasy to critique Soviet society and bureaucracy. His stories often include surreal, supernatural elements alongside biting humor and social observation.

    His best-known novel, The Master and Margarita, uses magical realism to tell a witty yet profound story of a visit by the Devil to communist-era Moscow, cleverly mixing fantasy, satire, philosophy, and romance.

  11. Andrei Bely

    Andrei Bely mixes poetic symbolism with dream-like imagery in his novels. In Petersburg, Bely creates a surreal vision of pre-revolutionary Russia.

    His characters navigate strange events and unsettling landscapes, and readers who appreciate the imaginative style and complex symbolism of Bruno Schulz are likely to connect with Bely's storytelling.

  12. Gustav Meyrink

    Gustav Meyrink writes eerie, mysterious novels where reality and dream merge seamlessly. His best-known novel, The Golem, takes readers into labyrinthine streets of Prague filled with shadowy presences, mystical symbols, and supernatural ambiguity.

    Like Schulz, Meyrink blurs psychological realism with surreal atmospheres and deeply symbolic scenes.

  13. Julio Cortázar

    Julio Cortázar experiments with fantastic realism, playful narrative structures, and shifting identities in his works. In Hopscotch, Cortázar challenges traditional storytelling by inviting readers to choose their path through the book.

    Those drawn to Bruno Schulz's imaginative worlds and narrative experimentation will appreciate Cortázar's creative approach.

  14. Yuri Olesha

    Yuri Olesha creates imaginative, disorienting stories satirizing Soviet society while exploring personal dreams and illusions. His novel Envy contrasts fantasy and harsh reality in portraying ambition, hope, and disappointment.

    Readers who enjoy how Schulz creatively uses everyday reality and transforms it into vivid surreal experiences will find much to enjoy in Olesha's work.

  15. Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

    Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz also known as Witkacy, constructs surreal, darkly comic plays and novels full of bizarre humor, disturbing imagery, and philosophical inquiries into the absurdity of life.

    His novel Insatiability exaggerates human desires and anxieties in a future dystopian setting. Witkiewicz's boldness in blending the ridiculous and grotesque is similar to Schulz's imaginative daring.