Heautoscopic hallucinations, also known as autoscopy or out-of-body experiences, are intriguing phenomena that have been explored in various literary works. While novels explicitly focused solely on heautoscopic hallucinations might be rare, there are several novels that incorporate these experiences as part of broader themes related to consciousness, identity, or the supernatural. Here are a few novels that feature heautoscopic hallucinations or related themes:
5 Novels About Heautoscopic Hallucinations
1. The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
This novel explores themes of grief, loss, and identity. The protagonist, Lauren Hartke, experiences a form of heautoscopic hallucination as she copes with the recent suicide of her husband.
2. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
This novel explores the aftermath of a young girl’s murder from the perspective of the victim, who narrates the story from her own personal heaven. While not focused on heautoscopic hallucinations per se, it does involve the protagonist observing events from a disembodied perspective.
3. Quantum Voices: A Novel by Stephen Spotte
Spotte’s narrative mosaic juxtaposes the dysfunctional, barely literate Hatfield family against Grayson’s sympathetic erudition, weaving a mesmerizing disquisition on friendship, love, notions of time and space, neuroscience, quantum physics, consciousness, and the notions of agency and selfhood.
4. Ubik by Philip K. Dick
This science fiction novel delves into themes of reality, perception, and identity.
5. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
In this young adult novel, the protagonist, Liz Hall, dies and finds herself in Elsewhere, a place where people age backward until they are reborn. While not primarily about heautoscopic hallucinations, it involves themes of life after death and exploring a new existence from a detached perspective.
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