10 books about loneliness

Loneliness runs through these ten books in very different registers, from Mary Shelley's scientist who cannot face what he has made to the shy lodger in Παπαδιαμάντης's Ἀποκριάτικη νυχτιά, who spends Carnival night alone upstairs and is richer for it. Pick one up when you want company for the quieter hours, or when you want to see how other people have lived inside the same feeling.

1.Frankenstein

Mary Shelley, 1818

A young scientist makes life and then cannot face what he has made. Told in nested voices, it asks who owes what to whom, and why ambition so often ends in solitude.
2.Ἀποκριάτικη νυχτιά

Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης, 1892

A shy, poetry-writing lodger hides upstairs while the whole neighbourhood dances below him — and spends Carnival night richer than anyone at the party.
3.The Stranger

Albert Camus, 1942

A clerk in sunstruck Algiers reports his own indifference to love, grief and guilt with unnerving calm.

I don’t know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, and I insulted him and told him not to waste his prayers on me. I grabbed him by the collar of his cassock. I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy.

Excerpt from The Stranger, Albert Camus 1942. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
4.Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens, 2018

A marsh-raised girl, a suspicious death, and a wild coast that keeps its secrets—for readers who want nature writing with a human mystery at the edge.
5.The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

John le Carré, 1963

The spy novel that made betrayal a literary subject: a burned-out agent, a divided Berlin, and no clean hands.
6.The Invisible Man

H. G. Wells, 1897

A stranger arrives at a country inn wrapped head to foot in bandages, and a small English village discovers that being unseen is not the same as being free.
7.Klara and the Sun

Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021

An artificial friend watches a child and the people who love her, trying to learn what makes a person singular—and whether love can be copied.
8.Ποιητικές συλλογές

Κώστας Καρυωτάκης, 1928

The poet of Greek disillusionment: ironic, musical verses about failed hopes, dull offices, and the strange comfort of knowing nothing lasts.

Εἴμαστε κάτι ξεχαρβαλωμένεςκιθάρες. Ὁ ἄνεμος, ὅταν περνάει,στίχους, ἤχους παράφωνους ξυπνάειστὶς χορδὲς ποὺ κρέμονται σὰν καδένες.Εἴμαστε κάτι ἀπίστευτες ἀντέννες.Ὑψώνονται σὰ δάχτυλα στὰ χάη,στὴν κορυφή τους τἄπειρο ἀντηχάει,μὰ γρήγορα θὰ πέσουνε σπασμένες.Εἴμαστε κάτι διάχυτες αἰσθήσεις,χωρὶς ἐλπίδα νὰ συγκεντρωθοῦμε.Στὰ νεῦρα μας μπερδεύεται ὅλη ἡ φύσις.Στὸ σῶμα, στὴν ἐνθύμηση πονοῦμε.Μᾶς διώχνουνε τὰ πράγματα, κ’ ἡ ποίησιςεἶναι τὸ καταφύγιο ποὺ φθονοῦμε.
9.Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Gail Honeyman, 2017

A woman who has arranged her life into perfect, narrow routines discovers that a small kindness can crack it open.
10.The Forerunner

Kahlil Gibran, 1892

An allegorical journey into the deepest chambers of the human heart, where wisdom is found not in answers, but in the language of nature and solitude.