“I am interested in disgust.”
If you’re searching for books like Lapvona – the unsettling, grotesque, and darkly funny novel by Ottessa Moshfegh – you’ve come to the right place. Lapvona blends medieval grit, bleak humour, and morally twisted characters in a way that lingers with you long after the final page. It’s no surprise readers are now looking for books similar to Lapvona that offer the same mix of disturbing atmosphere, sharp social commentary, and unforgettable weirdness. Here at What We Reading, you’ll find dark literary fiction, grotesque storytelling, and character-driven novels that echo the strangeness and intensity of Moshfegh’s world. Whether you want books to read after Lapvona or you’re simply pulled to unsettling, boundary-pushing fiction, these recommendations capture that same eerie, immersive feel. Here are the best books like Lapvona, perfect for readers craving novels that are bleak, bizarre, and impossible to pull away from.
Lapvona Summary
In a medieval village battered by famine and natural disasters, Marek, the motherless and abused son of the village shepherd, becomes an unlikely pivot in a brutal struggle for power. Raised by the blind village midwife Ina, who possesses a mysterious connection to the natural world, Marek experiences a rare bond and access to knowledge that most villagers can scarcely imagine. The village is dominated by the corrupt lord Villiam and his sycophantic priest, Father Barnabas, whose manipulations exploit the people’s desperate faith.
As the year of drought and famine deepens, Marek’s proximity to the lord’s family pulls him into a web of violence and occult forces that unsettle the old order. Ottessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona explores the thin line between sight and blindness, life and death, and civility and fragility, weaving a darkly mesmerising tale of survival, power, and the strange, often frightening ways the natural and spiritual worlds intersect. It is a spellbinding, morally complex novel that marks one of Moshfegh’s most daring literary leaps.
Between Two Fires – Christopher Buehlman
First up on our list of books like Lapvona is Christopher Buelhman’s iconic horror novel, Between Two Fires. The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a large cataclysm – that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has fallen behind the lines of conflict.
She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. But, as hell unleashes its full wrath, the true nature of the girl is revealed. Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.
Check Out The Best Books Like Between Two Fires
The Corner That Held Them – Sylvia Townsend Warner
In memory of the wife who had once dishonoured and always despised him, Brian de Retteville founded a twelfth-century convent in Norfolk. Two hundred years on, the Benedictine community is well established there and, as befits a convent whose origins had such ironic beginnings, the inhabitants are prey to the ambitions, squabbles, jealousies, and pleasures of less spiritual environments.
An outbreak of the Black Death, the collapse of the convent spire, the Bishop’s visitation, and a nun’s sudden disappearance are interwoven in the everyday life of the nuns, novices, and prioresses in this imagined history of a fourteenth-century nunnery.
Paradise Rot – Jenny Hval
Jo is in a strange new country for university, and is having a more peculiar time than most. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, and dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.
This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual depiction of sexual awakening and queer desire. Similar to Lapvona, it is a complex, poetic, and strange novel about bodies, sexuality, and the female gender.
The Unworthy – Agustina Bazterrica
From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever way she can. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed unworthy, she dreams of ascending the ranks to become one of the Enlightened at the centre of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.
But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past – and what she might be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the future, and her present life inside. A searing dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism and the tidal pull of our most violent instincts, The Unworthy is another unforgettable book like Lapvona from one of the masters of feminist horror.
His Black Tongue – Mitchell Lüthi
Dead things have been found in the fields of Enfaire, a God-fearing town north of Reams. Not just dead things but twisted forms, unholy shapes. There are rumours too – of a blasphemous union and of fell creatures that haunt the night. Yet, even as plague and witch pyres blacken the sky, the town remains untouched by the malady that has already claimed thousands and will claim thousands more. It is here, in Enfaire, that an old Franciscan friar and his ward take shelter from a storm. It is here, in a little town on the edge of civilisation, that they will have their faith truly tested.
His Black Tongue by Mitchell Lüthi is a tale of medieval horror, plunging the reader into the plague-torn land of fourteenth-century France, when pestilence and death walked hand-in-hand, and life was little more than a spluttering candle, waiting to be put out.
Matrix – Lauren Groff
Cast out of court by Eleanor of Acquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly love, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by her new surroundings, Marie soon finds focus and love in collective life with her single and mercurial sisters. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will Marie’s visions for the future be a bulwark enough?
Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Lauren Groff’s Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerising portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around, perfect if you’re wondering what to read after Lapvona.
Year Of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks
When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anne Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anne’s eyes, we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.
As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead an annus mirabilis, a “year of wonders.” Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the English Peak District, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history.
A Certain Hunger – Chelsea G. Summers
Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and highly intelligent, Dorothy’s clear mastery of the culinary arts makes it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy also loves sex, almost as much as she loves food. And whilst she has struggled to find a long-term partner, she makes the best of her single love with frequent trips between Manhattan and Italy, where she samples a taste of both.
But there is something within Dorothy that’s different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she begins to embrace what makes her uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a farm-to-table childhood to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man’s neck, Dorothy Daniels shows us what happens when a woman finally realises her superiority in this grotesque, intoxicating feminist horror book like Lapvona.
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The Lamb – Lucy Rose
Margot and Mama have lived by the forest for as long as Margot can remember. When Margot isn’t at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies.
But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, little Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make a bid for freedom. With this coming-of-age tale, debut novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their angel, desire, and animal instincts – and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.
The Doloriad – Missouri Williams
In the wake of a mysterious environmental cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of humankind, the Matriarch, her brother, and the family descended from their incest cling to existence on the edges of a deserted city. The Matriarch, ruling with fear and force, dreams of starting humanity over again, though her children are not so certain. Together, the family scavenges supplies and attempts to cultivate the poisoned earth. For entertainment, they watch old VHS tapes of a TV show featuring a medieval saint who faces down a sequence of logical and ethical dilemmas.
But one day, the Matriarch dreams of another group of survivors and sends away one of her daughters, the legless Dolores, as a marriage offering. When Dolores returns the next day, her reappearance triggers the breakdown of the Matriarch’s fragile order, and the control she wields over their sprawling family slowly begins to weaken.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
