So I’ve been on a quest for the last few years to create a comprehensive list of books that are “hard to read” due to disturbing subject matter/themes/plot, or because of format (think House of Leaves, which is both subject matter AND format). These books range from the lightly disturbing to extreme horror, so don’t expect each title to steal your sleep. There’s too many to list details, but feel free to start digging through this list to find what you’re into.
I haven’t read them all, so I can’t speak to the quality of each book, but I thought others might want this list to start their own hunt.
Comment with your own disturbing/”hard to read” books!
\*Subject Matter:\*
Confessions by Kanae Minato
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
The Ruins by Scott Smith
The Story of Junk by Linda Yablonsky
Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Come Closer by Sara Gran
Falconer by John Cheever
The Troop by Nick Cutter
The Deep by Nick Cutter
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
In The Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami (not the best writer, but most of his work is shocking to a degree)
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Tampa by Alissa Nutting
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Collector by John Fowles
Less Than Zero; Imperial Bedrooms; American Psycho; all by Bret Easton Ellis (all his works are disturbing to some extent)
Reception by Kenzie Jennings
Under the Skin by Michel Faber
Crash by JG Ballard
Outer Dark; Child of God; Blood Meridian; by Cormac McCarthy
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Hogg by Samuel R. Delany
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
The Sluts by Dennis Cooper
The Bridge; The Wasp Factory; Complicity by Iain Banks
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Cows by Matthew Stokoe
Hopscotch by Julio Cartazar
Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison
Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
Notice by Heather Lewis
You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann
Mary by Nat Cassidy
Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman
Any Man by Amber Tamlyn
To Be Devoured by Sara Tantlinger
The Neighbors by Ania Ahlborn
Suffer the Children by Craig DiLouie
Kin by Kealan Patrick Burke
Woom by Duncan Ralston
Tapetum Lucidum by Melissa Lason
The Between by Tananarive Due
The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson
Gone to See The River Man by Kristopher Triana
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
The Royal Family by William T. Vollman
A Carnivore’s Inquiry by Sabina Murray
The End of Alice by A.M. Holmes
Goddess of Filth by V. Castro
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
​
**NON FICTION:**
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang (non-fiction)
From Here to Eternity: Travelling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty (non-fiction)
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty (non-fiction)
Stiff: The Curios Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
​
**\*Format:\***
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson
The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski
The Familiar I-V by Mark Z. Danielewski
Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Suicide Casanova by Arthur Nersesian
S by J.J. Abrams
by hopeless_baguette
6 Comments
Subject matter- Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott.
It’s about a girl who gets kidnapped at age 10 and held as a sex slave for 5 years. It’s not all that graphic, but oddly more disturbing for it, as the descriptions of these horrific ideas are somewhat childlike. It’s one of my favorite books.
Ulysses by James Joyce is notoriously difficult (it’d go in your “formatting” category)
There’s a few on here I wouldn’t call disturbing, so it is a bit surprising that the notoriously chilling Wasp Factory by Iain Banks isn’t on here. That’s the most disturbing book I have read.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles for format. Three endings? Characters that rebel against the narrator and author? Victorian lit through a postmodern metafictional lens? You bet your sweet ass.
Gonna second what u/Molmoran said about a bunch of books in your lists that I have read and wouldn’t call disturbing. But then, we all have our own thresholds.
Check out Lord Horror by David Britton. It will probably fit in both your categories.
Thanks everyone for contributing your favorite disturbing or hard to read books! Keep ’em coming!