Jun 25, 2026
What are the best books on disability? Tragic books are welcome of course, but it would be interesting to read something with a more mundane or even humorous tone.
Carson McCullers~ I wrote my dissertation on disability in her books. She always has some character with a freakish element. I will say it isn’t proper disability. In The Member of the Wedding there is a perfectly able bodied girl who happens to be comparatively tall at 5’8 which makes her feel abnormal. And then you get into the whole issue of what is actually disabled… In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter there is a deaf mute who ironically is the most socially capable character in the whole book and if a disability isn’t limiting, is it a disability?
They aren’t very fun books but I jump at the chance to recommend her.
If you’re looking for non fiction as well Lennard Davis is very good. You’ll find a lot of annoying woke stuff (sorry to be that guy but it is annoying!) but a discerning reader can look past it.
Flower for Algernon is another obvious choice but again not very humorous.
Double on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter if you haven't already read it, so good. I, Claudius is another famous one with a fantastic story.
The obvious nonfiction works like The Story Of My Life, My Left Foot, and Face to face are amazing; the first two even have excellent movies. For more recent books, I've heard great things about Country of the Blind A Memoir at the End of Sight.
For things out of left field, Infinite Jest of course has the wheelchair assassins with the absurd(ist?) backstory, Tyrion Lannister from A Game of Thrones is treated in-universe as having a disability, and the last book I finished A Gambler's Anatomy features a main character with a major visual impairment who undergoes a necessary but brutal treatment from which he can never fully recover.