#so far it's drive your plow by Tokarczuk and the one im currently focusing all my brain power into Human Acts by Han Kang

[ice-devourer]

I DIDDD READ KAFKA ON THE SHORE OMG i first read it when i was fifteen and i reread it almost annually!! I'm not quite sure if The Dumb House is absurdist however it’s definitely bonkers!! and im just finishing up on some other books before getting a copy of it. since u mentioned Kafka in the tags,,,i do plan on reading The Castle bc a Murakami blog/article mentioned that Kafka’s The Castle was one of the fundamental inspirations for Murakami!!!

Murakami was one of my absolute favorites i’ve read a lot of his works my favs being:

Dance Dance Dance

Kafka on The Shore

Killing Commendatore

They're very veryyy precious to me however, the uncanny aspects of it are a little too quiet for me now that im almost 20,, so im trying to get into sci-fi that's pretty weird and gross and moldy and Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer is kind of a nice starting point!! uve mentioned Slaughterhouse Five and it's already on my storygraph tbr but i might begin with Siren of Titans first since the first few pages in a preview of it rlly caught my attention uwu.

as for horror i've only read from t. kingfisher bc i only began reading horror earlier this year hshwh and i think im into folk horror!! The Twisted Ones was so much fun!! currently (i was introduced to this concept thru reading Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead) im obsessed with animals taking revenge!! also bizarre fucked up short stories by Bora Chung are pretty good, i didn't finish Cursed Bunny yet tho im savoring it,,, her stories are so strong and vibrant and her short story with the same name as the title is so heartfelt and just sad but ahh it was so good!!

i’ll definitely take ur suggestion/idea of reading more batshit / personally underexplored stuff to my heart <33 whenever i try a new genre or something with themes that i havent encountered ever i physically feel my brain get rewired it's so nice haha!!

SORRY FOR SENDING AN ASK AGAIN BUT U MENTIOND ABSURDIST FICTION DO U HAVE OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS HEHEHE <333

I can't think of any other recommendations as fun or lighthearted as bsd that I can speak to personally, although, from what I've heard, Terry Pratchett's Discworld may be similarly absurdist-but-heartfelt.

If I read absurdism, it's usually not wholly absurdist, but grotesque or surrealist fiction with absurdist elements (including several of my favorite modern Japanese lit short stories). The works I have really loved that are inarguably absurdist are works like Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend alongside bsd since bsd is lighthearted, non-graphic, and magical realist in ways those titles are not.

If you're interested in Japanese absurdism, then you may enjoy Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore and Kobo Abe's The Box Man.

Also, while I mentioned absurdism before, I think really it's just important to read a lot of weird, batshit, challenging, discomfiting, nonlinear, bombastic fiction generally. That's absurdist fiction, sometimes, but it's also fiction that's surrealist, grotesque, gothic, magical realist, bizarro, sci-fi, horror, psychological, satirical, allegorical, etc; usually some combination thereof.

Literally, whatever expands your palate and challenges your perception of reality.