Call Me by Your Name
André Aciman
One hot Riviera summer, 17-year-old Elio falls into an all-consuming first love with his father’s guest, counting the days left
Both: Romantic · Melancholic · Obsession
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Madonna in a Fur Coat
Sabahattin Ali
A shy Turkish clerk in 1920s Berlin keeps returning to a haunting self-portrait, until he meets the woman who painted it
- Classics
- Romantic
- Melancholic
- Obsession
- Big city
- Slow & immersive
- Short read
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Giovanni's Room
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Waiting in 1950s Paris for his fiancée, a young American falls for an Italian barman in a cramped little room he already knows he will flee
Both: Melancholic · Big city
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The End of the Affair
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In bombed-out wartime London, a jealous writer hires a detective to trail the married lover who left him without a word, unable to let go
Both: Romantic · Melancholic
The Transit of Venus
Shirley Hazzard
Across decades of postwar England, quiet astronomer Ted Tice keeps loving orphaned Caro as she gives her heart to a careless, married poet
Both: Melancholic
White Nights
Fyodor Dostoevsky
A lonely young dreamer meets a weeping girl on a St Petersburg bridge and lives a whole, fragile romance in four sleepless summer nights
Both: Romantic · Melancholic · Obsession
