Is there any kind of fiction where multiple stories are connected in a recursive loop? The connection could be a character who writes or narrates the story. e.g.
- story A -> story B
- story B -> story C
- story C -> story A
Thanks in advance for any help!
One Thousand and One Nights, that is the oldest.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is pretty close
Thanks for the suggestions! Some have been already on my reading list, because they went into that direction and others I’ve added. I’m not sure, if my wording was understood 100% and if these books are what I’m looking for, but I guess the acknowledgement of the recursion would be a surprise element anyway. Thanks again!
You can try 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton! I really liked that one. It’s more Groundhog Day but with a bit of a twist on each iteration if that makes sense. I don’t want to spoil too much but it was a wild ride putting things together.
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
Subtle, but I thought of another one. Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun (five parts) – see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun
I’ve seen it described as a “palimpsest” – where a page has been erased to make room for more writing, but if you’re very careful, you can still read the original. At first glance, it appears to be a bog-standard fantasy travelogue, but as you read, you realize this thing is an onion with layers hidden underneath. It becomes a puzzle decoding the whole thing – a fun puzzle mind you, because there is still an entertaining surface level adventure going on – and as you peel back the layers, you realize that time travel is in play and the whole story becomes much more interesting. There’s a bunch of other sources non-linearity in it too, mostly due to memory transference. While you’re reading, you should be asking yourself “who is Severian?”
You could spend your whole life studying this thing.
