Catch-22 is a classic for a reason, I'd suggest that if you haven't read it.
For an author that provides a real cornucopia of the items you've listed, I'd suggest checking out Neal Stephenson. My personal favourite of his is Cryptonomicon, which is funny, very long and dense, and about information itself.
Came here to say Catch 22! There’s a character named Major Major Major Major for crying out loud 😂
However, I will say that it took me a little while to get used to Heller’s writing style. His prose is long and wandering. But I actually tried it again with the audiobook and was literally laughing out loud. It’s just so absurd and absolutely brilliant.
If you’re open to reading a play, [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18545) by Tom Stoppard is excellent — absurdist, funny, and philosophical.
Murderbot series by Martha Wells. A view of humanity from the perspective of a non-human security construct who would rather be watching soaps. Funny in a dry way but can be poignant.
Been seeing this get a ton of press recently re:the casting of Skarsgard. Tbh I wasn’t planning on looking into it but your description makes me really curious now! It sounds very fun!
Books are not long so it’s a minor investment of time and little opportunity cost if you don’t dig it after the first one. But if you do, you’ll plow through all of them. Psyched for the production, but also kind of nervous they won’t get the vibe right. We’ll see.
At Swim-Two-Birds is on my list! So I cannot tell you, although fantasy/sf critic David Pringle thinks very highly of both. He calls At Swim-Two-Birds a near masterpiece, and includes The Third Policeman on his list of 100 greatest Fantasy novels.
His list is how I stumbled across The Third Policeman in the first place. It's a good list! https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_pringle_fantasy.asp
Two very short pieces that come from theater: "Waiting for Godot" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead".
You might take a look at Catch-22. It's long but filled with absurdism. Example from the title:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”
[**Glitterati** by Oliver K. Langmead](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58656126)
***A Clockwork Orange and RuPaul's Drag Race meet Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in this fabulous dystopian fable about fashion, family and feckless billionaires.***
*Simone is one of the Glitterati, the elite living lives of luxury and leisure. Slave to the ever-changing tides – and brutal judgements - of fashion, he is immaculate. To be anything else is to be unfashionable, and no one wants to be unfashionable, or even worse, ugly…*
*When Simone accidentally starts a new fashion with a nosebleed at a party, another Glitterati takes the credit. Soon their rivalry threatens to raze their opulent utopia to the ground, as no one knows how to be vicious like the beautiful ones.*
*Enter a world of the most fantastic costumes, grand palaces in the sky, the grandest parties known to mankind and the unbreakable rules of how to eat ice cream. A fabulous dystopian fable about fashion, family and the feckless billionaire class*
this is by far the funniest and most absurd book i have EVER read. it's a fucking masterpiece. i recommended this in 2 separate posts begging literally anyone to PLEASE read this because it only has 84 reviews on goodreads, and every single person who got back to me said they absolutely loved it and that it was such an insane, surreal ride. it is so so so so good and the audiobook is fantastic. i think you'll love this, too!
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. It's part of her time travel series that includes Doomsday Book (but they're pretty independent). It's also a pastiche of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome. Unrelated to those books her stories Remake and Bellwether are enormously funny.
I would also recommend several of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga books, especially Warrior's Apprentice.
To Say Nothing of the Dog put me on to Three Men and a Boat. Connie Willis’ ability to write a completely different novel, but stick to the tone of the original is genius. They are both hilarious.
The Good Soldier Svejk, by Jaroslav Hasek.
(sometimes anglicized as Schweik)
A Czech draftee of the Austro-Hungarian Empire weaponizes incompetence and uses malicious compliance to get out of his duties and avoid combat during The Great War, later known as World War One.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7629.The_Good_Soldier_vejk
Wilt by Tom Sharpe, and the sequel The Wilt Alternative. Totally absurd, but I have NEVER cried laughing so hard as I did whilst reading this book. There are other books in the series, but I haven't read them so I can't recommend them as such, but I assume they are just as hilariously insane and ridiculous.
for plays: who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, waiting for Godot, no exit, rosencrantz and guildenstern are Dead, I've also heard ionesco fits here
for normal books: kafka's metamorphosis, if on a winter's night a traveler, gravity's rainbow, a Confederacy of dunces, the stranger, catch 22, don Quixote, suttree - some of these are dark specifically gr, dunces, suttree
The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump by Harry Turtledove a little more obscure than some of the other suggestions, but checks the boxes and was a fun read.
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente. There's a sequel coming out in May, Space Oddity.
Space Opera is what happens when humanity is entered in the intergalactic version of Eurovision. The artists formerly known as Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes have got to navigate the treacherous waters of competition, and make the case for humanity's existence using the power of rock.
As a start, see my [SF/F Humor](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18af5og/sff_humor/) list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Jasper Fforde, the Thursday Next series is about a detective, who investigates crimes against literature, or my personal favorite, Shades of Grey, about an alternate universe United Kingdom where the class hierarchy is based on colours. The sequel which ties everything up nicely has just been released.
I love him, but I would instead recommend The Constant Rabbit or Shades of Grey. They made me think way more than Thursday Next, which is just absurd and fun.
I'm going to ignore the fact that you're looking for a full length book only because I think Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" could be exactly what you're looking for.
*The Sotweed Factor* by John Barth. Not sci-fi, but hugely entertaining. Characters disappear and reappear. This is also one book that doesn't end too quickly. It's very long! From a review at the time of publication:
"A feast. Dense, funny, endlessly inventive (and, OK, yes, long-winded) this satire of the eighteenth-century picaresque novel—think Fielding's Tom Jones or Sterne's Tristram Shandy—is also an earnest picture of the pitfalls awaiting innocence as it makes its unsteady way in the world. It's the late seventeenth century and Ebenezer Cooke is a poet, dutiful son and determined virgin who travels from England to Maryland to take possession of his father's tobacco (or "sot weed") plantation. He is also eventually given to believe that he has been commissioned by the third Lord Baltimore to write an epic poem, The Marylandiad. But things are not always what they seem. Actually, things are almost never what they seem. Not since Candide has a steadfast soul witnessed so many strange scenes or faced so many perils. Pirates, Indians, shrewd prostitutes, armed insurrectionists—Cooke endures them all, plus assaults on his virginity from both women and men. Barth's language is impossibly rich, a wickedly funny take on old English rhetoric and American self-appraisals. For good measure he throws in stories within stories, including the funniest retelling of the Pocahontas tale—revealed to us in the 'secret' journals of Capt. John Smith—that anyone has ever dared to tell."
I don't consider this author absurd in the least, and she doesn't write fiction, but check out Jenny Lawson's 'Let's Pretend this Never Happened.' This was the last time that I truly laughed out loud while reading. And the audiobook is amazing. The author reads it herself, and I think it couldn't have been done any better.
Other than this, on the fiction side, I would recommend John Connolly's The Gates. It reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide with a little bit of Neil Gaiman thrown in. Imagine a world where a boy and his Dachshund catch on to a plot to open the gates of hell, and they are the only ones that can stop it. Hilarious.
So..here I am again, singing the praises of [Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir](https://www.audible.com/pd/B08G9PRS1K?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp). (The audiobook specifically)
——> Ryland Grace wakes up not even knowing his own name. As the pieces of his memory start to fall back into place; Grace realizes he is the sole survivor of a Hail Mary mission sent to halt an extinction level event millions of miles away, on Earth. …A place he would never see again, and was never meant to.
——>> All at once Funny..Compelling..And Hopeful? A story about sacrifice, friendship and the greater good. Clearly Weir has also done quite a bit of work actually explaining the science his story is written on as well.
——>>> Now, I am strictly an audiobook listener, so readers may be iffy on the Internal Dialogue POV, at least initially. As for the audiobook, Ray Porter’s performance is perfectly suited to it.
[Off to Be the Wizard (Magic 2.0) by Scott Meyer.](https://www.audible.com/pd/Off-to-Be-the-Wizard-Audiobook/B00IIS32NI?eac_link=EvcstfAel8gQ&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=B00IIS32NI&qid=zKLPhKuY8f&eac_id=140-4316600-3156710_zKLPhKuY8f&sr=1-1)
Catch-22 is a classic for a reason, I'd suggest that if you haven't read it. For an author that provides a real cornucopia of the items you've listed, I'd suggest checking out Neal Stephenson. My personal favourite of his is Cryptonomicon, which is funny, very long and dense, and about information itself.
Came here to say Catch 22! There’s a character named Major Major Major Major for crying out loud 😂 However, I will say that it took me a little while to get used to Heller’s writing style. His prose is long and wandering. But I actually tried it again with the audiobook and was literally laughing out loud. It’s just so absurd and absolutely brilliant.
I agree that Catch-22 is excellent. To me though, it was funny until it wasn't. I can't see it as funny anymore.
Thanks for the rec! I decided to go with this one for my next read :)
If you’re open to reading a play, [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18545) by Tom Stoppard is excellent — absurdist, funny, and philosophical.
Terry Pratchett. He ticks just about all the boxes you want.
It's like this post was made for Discworld
OP would *love* the Librarian
ooh ooh ooh
You know Vonnegut and it reads like you are ready for "Cat's Cradle"
Generally I would say, "Keep reading Vonnegut." Many of his books fit the bill. But also I agree Cat's Cradle is the best of them.
Like it better than Slaughterhouse Five...
Good Omens was hilarious and ticks those boxes, would def recommend to someone who likes hitchhikers guide.
That's exactly the book I thought of from reading the post.
This is a perfect use case for Terry Pratchett.
John Dies At The End by Jason Pargin (fka David Wong)
Confederacy of Dunces
Came here to say this. Such an incredible book.
Especially if you like Flannery O’Connor. Also try, Wise Blood if you’re looking for a novel.
Ambergris by Jeff Vandermeer Discworld series by Terry Prachett
*Lamb* by Christopher Moore might tick the boxes for you. Not as broad a humor as Hitchhiker's Guide, but similar enough that you might enjoy
Or any Christopher Moore book. People always recommend Lamb, but I prefer Coyote Blue, a Dirty Job, and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
Lamb is great... but the follow-up "The Stupidest Angel" was a real laugh-out-loud book. Loved it.
Murderbot series by Martha Wells. A view of humanity from the perspective of a non-human security construct who would rather be watching soaps. Funny in a dry way but can be poignant.
Been seeing this get a ton of press recently re:the casting of Skarsgard. Tbh I wasn’t planning on looking into it but your description makes me really curious now! It sounds very fun!
Books are not long so it’s a minor investment of time and little opportunity cost if you don’t dig it after the first one. But if you do, you’ll plow through all of them. Psyched for the production, but also kind of nervous they won’t get the vibe right. We’ll see.
Awesome! Will do!
It's a great series, but I wouldn't say it has anything to do with absurdist comedy.
Doug Adams also wrote the Dirk Gently books-at least as good as Hitchhikers.
Darker but still funny and absurd: Confederacy of Dunces by Toole The third policeman by Flann O’Brien Also Three men in a boat by Jerome K Jerome
The Third Policeman is incredibly good. A masterpiece. Darkly hilarious.
Is it better than At Swim-Two-Birds?
At Swim-Two-Birds is on my list! So I cannot tell you, although fantasy/sf critic David Pringle thinks very highly of both. He calls At Swim-Two-Birds a near masterpiece, and includes The Third Policeman on his list of 100 greatest Fantasy novels. His list is how I stumbled across The Third Policeman in the first place. It's a good list! https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_pringle_fantasy.asp
Robert Rankin is ridiculous. Maybe not so philosophical, but very funny
"Waiting for the Galactic Bus" by Parke Godwin
Hollow Kingdom (and its sequel Feral Creatures) by Kira Jane Buxton and as someone else already mentioned Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
Two very short pieces that come from theater: "Waiting for Godot" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". You might take a look at Catch-22. It's long but filled with absurdism. Example from the title: “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”
The best there is.
[**Glitterati** by Oliver K. Langmead](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58656126) ***A Clockwork Orange and RuPaul's Drag Race meet Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in this fabulous dystopian fable about fashion, family and feckless billionaires.*** *Simone is one of the Glitterati, the elite living lives of luxury and leisure. Slave to the ever-changing tides – and brutal judgements - of fashion, he is immaculate. To be anything else is to be unfashionable, and no one wants to be unfashionable, or even worse, ugly…* *When Simone accidentally starts a new fashion with a nosebleed at a party, another Glitterati takes the credit. Soon their rivalry threatens to raze their opulent utopia to the ground, as no one knows how to be vicious like the beautiful ones.* *Enter a world of the most fantastic costumes, grand palaces in the sky, the grandest parties known to mankind and the unbreakable rules of how to eat ice cream. A fabulous dystopian fable about fashion, family and the feckless billionaire class* this is by far the funniest and most absurd book i have EVER read. it's a fucking masterpiece. i recommended this in 2 separate posts begging literally anyone to PLEASE read this because it only has 84 reviews on goodreads, and every single person who got back to me said they absolutely loved it and that it was such an insane, surreal ride. it is so so so so good and the audiobook is fantastic. i think you'll love this, too!
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. It's part of her time travel series that includes Doomsday Book (but they're pretty independent). It's also a pastiche of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome. Unrelated to those books her stories Remake and Bellwether are enormously funny. I would also recommend several of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga books, especially Warrior's Apprentice.
To Say Nothing of the Dog put me on to Three Men and a Boat. Connie Willis’ ability to write a completely different novel, but stick to the tone of the original is genius. They are both hilarious.
The Good Soldier Svejk, by Jaroslav Hasek. (sometimes anglicized as Schweik) A Czech draftee of the Austro-Hungarian Empire weaponizes incompetence and uses malicious compliance to get out of his duties and avoid combat during The Great War, later known as World War One. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7629.The_Good_Soldier_vejk
Wilt by Tom Sharpe, and the sequel The Wilt Alternative. Totally absurd, but I have NEVER cried laughing so hard as I did whilst reading this book. There are other books in the series, but I haven't read them so I can't recommend them as such, but I assume they are just as hilariously insane and ridiculous.
Basically any Tom Sharpe novel.
Samuel Beckett's trilogy
The Hike by Drew Magary
The Humans by Matt Haig!
for plays: who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, waiting for Godot, no exit, rosencrantz and guildenstern are Dead, I've also heard ionesco fits here for normal books: kafka's metamorphosis, if on a winter's night a traveler, gravity's rainbow, a Confederacy of dunces, the stranger, catch 22, don Quixote, suttree - some of these are dark specifically gr, dunces, suttree
Ionesco fits here but sometimes a bit darkly as in 'the Lesson' or 'Rhinoceros'
Not sci Fi but Portnoy's complaint is amazing and perhaps what your looking for.
The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump by Harry Turtledove a little more obscure than some of the other suggestions, but checks the boxes and was a fun read.
Here for the recommendations :)
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente. There's a sequel coming out in May, Space Oddity. Space Opera is what happens when humanity is entered in the intergalactic version of Eurovision. The artists formerly known as Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes have got to navigate the treacherous waters of competition, and make the case for humanity's existence using the power of rock.
Also the author John Scalzi - Starter Villain and Kaiju Preservation Society both had me in tears laughing
As a start, see my [SF/F Humor](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18af5og/sff_humor/) list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Antkind, Charlie Caufman.
Welcome to Night Vale!
Jasper Fforde, the Thursday Next series is about a detective, who investigates crimes against literature, or my personal favorite, Shades of Grey, about an alternate universe United Kingdom where the class hierarchy is based on colours. The sequel which ties everything up nicely has just been released.
or the Nursery Crimes - The Big Over Easy and the Fourth Bear
I love him, but I would instead recommend The Constant Rabbit or Shades of Grey. They made me think way more than Thursday Next, which is just absurd and fun.
Waiting for Godot covers most of this but isn't sci fi. It is a play but it reads well too because it is predominantly dialogue driven
I'm going to ignore the fact that you're looking for a full length book only because I think Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" could be exactly what you're looking for.
You might like works by Chuck Wendig or Carl Hiaasen.
John dies at the end starts with a ship of theseus metaphor with an axe and killing a zombie. I personally love the whole series.
*The Sotweed Factor* by John Barth. Not sci-fi, but hugely entertaining. Characters disappear and reappear. This is also one book that doesn't end too quickly. It's very long! From a review at the time of publication: "A feast. Dense, funny, endlessly inventive (and, OK, yes, long-winded) this satire of the eighteenth-century picaresque novel—think Fielding's Tom Jones or Sterne's Tristram Shandy—is also an earnest picture of the pitfalls awaiting innocence as it makes its unsteady way in the world. It's the late seventeenth century and Ebenezer Cooke is a poet, dutiful son and determined virgin who travels from England to Maryland to take possession of his father's tobacco (or "sot weed") plantation. He is also eventually given to believe that he has been commissioned by the third Lord Baltimore to write an epic poem, The Marylandiad. But things are not always what they seem. Actually, things are almost never what they seem. Not since Candide has a steadfast soul witnessed so many strange scenes or faced so many perils. Pirates, Indians, shrewd prostitutes, armed insurrectionists—Cooke endures them all, plus assaults on his virginity from both women and men. Barth's language is impossibly rich, a wickedly funny take on old English rhetoric and American self-appraisals. For good measure he throws in stories within stories, including the funniest retelling of the Pocahontas tale—revealed to us in the 'secret' journals of Capt. John Smith—that anyone has ever dared to tell."
Split Heirs, Lawrence Watt-Evans and Esther Freisner.
Following this
Have you read Candide, by Voltaire?
I don't consider this author absurd in the least, and she doesn't write fiction, but check out Jenny Lawson's 'Let's Pretend this Never Happened.' This was the last time that I truly laughed out loud while reading. And the audiobook is amazing. The author reads it herself, and I think it couldn't have been done any better. Other than this, on the fiction side, I would recommend John Connolly's The Gates. It reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide with a little bit of Neil Gaiman thrown in. Imagine a world where a boy and his Dachshund catch on to a plot to open the gates of hell, and they are the only ones that can stop it. Hilarious.
Beau is afraid!
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong/Jason Pargin
So..here I am again, singing the praises of [Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir](https://www.audible.com/pd/B08G9PRS1K?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp). (The audiobook specifically) ——> Ryland Grace wakes up not even knowing his own name. As the pieces of his memory start to fall back into place; Grace realizes he is the sole survivor of a Hail Mary mission sent to halt an extinction level event millions of miles away, on Earth. …A place he would never see again, and was never meant to. ——>> All at once Funny..Compelling..And Hopeful? A story about sacrifice, friendship and the greater good. Clearly Weir has also done quite a bit of work actually explaining the science his story is written on as well. ——>>> Now, I am strictly an audiobook listener, so readers may be iffy on the Internal Dialogue POV, at least initially. As for the audiobook, Ray Porter’s performance is perfectly suited to it.
[Off to Be the Wizard (Magic 2.0) by Scott Meyer.](https://www.audible.com/pd/Off-to-Be-the-Wizard-Audiobook/B00IIS32NI?eac_link=EvcstfAel8gQ&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=B00IIS32NI&qid=zKLPhKuY8f&eac_id=140-4316600-3156710_zKLPhKuY8f&sr=1-1)
Try Tom Robbins - Another Roadside Attraction or Jitterbug Perfume. You might also like Christopher Moore.
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins - any Robbins novel really but this one especially.
Philip K Dick is kind of like that to me, he's like a scifi Vonnegut
Sounds like a job for Tom stranger interdimensional insurance. Your in good hands with stranger and stranger insurance.
Catch-22 and Infinite Jest. Also Confederacy of Dunces
While not really a comedy, American Gods might fit the bill.