18 books with the most unusual narrators

When it comes to narrators, these authors don't discriminate. Their storytellers can be inanimate objects, animals, 5-year-olds, dead, or undead. We've rounded up the novels, short stories, and metafiction with out-of-the-ordinary narrators.

Narrator: Crack cocaine

This novel centers around Darlene, a woman who is unable to cope with her husband's death, abandons her son, and is tricked into forced labor on a produce farm. As she attempts to escape and reunite with her young child, she must also battle her drug addiction. In fact, one of the narrators of the book is the drug itself, crack cocaine.

Narrator: Death

Personified death pops up in literature all the time, and this World War II novel is no exception. In the book, a German preteen begins stealing books that the Nazi Regime wants to destroy — and learns to read and write in the process. Death seems a fitting narrator for the book's setting during the Holocaust, when Jewish people and other marginalized groups faced genocide.

Narrator: An unborn child

In a nutshell (ha!) it's Hamlet, but told from the perspective of a surprisingly competent unborn child.

Narrator: A 5-year-old boy

You may remember the independent film of the same name. Didn't make much of a splash — Oh, wait, it was nominated for four Oscars and won one for Best Actress. The novel is told through the eyes of a 5-year-old boy who is trapped with his mother in a small room, knowing nothing of the outside world.

Narrator: Several, including inanimate objects and a color

This Turkish 2006 Nobel Prize winner, about miniaturists in the 1591 Ottoman Empire, uses a different narrator for each chapter. They include people (real and mythic), ideas, and sometimes inanimate objects: a murdered corpse; a coin; Satan; two dervishes; and the color red.

Narrator: A bunny

Anthropomorphized rabbits become refugees on an epic journey when their home is destroyed in this 1972 novel. The main bunny, Fiver, serves as the book's narrator.

Narrator: A demon

This narrator, a demon named Jakabok, took some notes from Lemony Snicket because he really doesn't want the reader to read his book. In fact, several times in the novel, he addresses the reader directly, telling them to burn the book and set him free.

Narrator: A gecko

Felix, a person with albinism who fabricates and sells personal histories, encounters a mysterious customer who begins to play games with his head. This magical realism novel, translated from Portuguese, is told by a man reincarnated as a gecko.

Narrator: An angel

The second book in Davies' Cornish Trilogy follows the life of Francis Cornish and is told by an angel, the Recording Angel, with additional intervention from a fate.

Narrator: A murder victim

In this 2002 novel, a girl is raped and murdered in a small town in Pennsylvania. She narrates her family's struggle to cope from her isolated, personal heaven.

Narrator: An insect

The narrator literally turns into a fly on the wall in this 2013 novel from the daughter of Arthur Miller. Suddenly, young peddler Jacob Cerf isn't in 1800s Paris anymore — he's in 21st Century Long Island...and he's an insect.

Narrator: A spirit child

This Booker Prize-winning novel from Nigerian author Ben Okri centers around Azaro, a spirit child in the low-income area of an unknown African city. Azaro narrates as he interacts with — and is torn between — the real world and the spiritual world.

Narrator: A dog

Enzo is a loyal friend and supporter of Denny Swift, a race car driver. He narrates as Denny faces failure in trying to find success personally and professionally, but is frustrated that he can't seem to connect and help his friend. Enzo is a dog. What a good boy!

Narrator: A bowl

Rosa, an art appraiser in London, comes into possession of a mysterious 5,000-year-old Sumerian bowl. With her magical ability to read the memories of inanimate objects, she accesses its immense library of information. The book's publisher, Penguin, boasts it is "unquestionably the finest novel ever narrated by a bowl."

Narrator: A voodoo spirit

Widely considered a literary classic, this 1986 novel focuses on a disillusioned New Hampshire repairman who moves his family to Florida for a better life. There, he encounters a Haitian refugee and her family who have traveled as far for the same reason. This portrait of globalization is conveyed by a Haitian voodoo spirit narrator.

Narrator: A parrot

This 2004 novella may or may not be about Sherlock Holmes, at 89, solving a murder mystery and the search for a missing parrot. Fine, most of the novel is narrated by an omniscient third person but there's at least a chapter narrated by the parrot.

Narrator: An ashtray

A woman reincarnated as an ashtray narrates a vignette called "Ashes to Ashes" in this short story collection. Perhaps a little too on the nose.

Narrator: A tree

A short (7-page) story, "The Direction of the Road" is narrated by an old oak tree that, over hundreds of years, observes the changes to the road it sits beside.