Tarot reading: 22 books to match the major arcana

I feel like tarot and literature share a secret language – both maps of transformation. The Major Arcana’s 22 cards trace the soul’s journey through archetypes that echo across stories. So I wanted to create my own literary tarot spread, where each card finds its mirror in a contemporary book: a story that embodies its essence, challenges its meaning or reimagines its path.

0. The Fool – James by Percival Everett

The Fool steps into the unknown with naïve courage. In James, Everett reimagines Twain’s Jim as a man of wit, agency and subversion. It’s a leap into literary revisionism, where the journey is both familiar and radically new. Like the Fool, James walks into danger with eyes wide open, and changes everything.

I. The Magician – Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

The Magician channels power into transformation. Dawson’s witches wield magic as metaphor for identity, resistance and systemic change. The book explores how intention shapes reality and how power – particularly queer, feminine power – can be reclaimed and redefined.

II. The High Priestess – Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

The High Priestess dwells in mystery, duality and inner knowing. Freshwater is a spiritual descent into trauma and divine embodiment. Ada is not one self, she is many – an echo of the Priestess’s veil between worlds, where truth is felt, not seen.

III. The Empress – A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

The Empress nurtures through sacrifice. Mariam and Laila endure violence, loss and silence but their bond becomes a sanctuary. The novel honours maternal love, resilience and the power of women who create life – even in ruin.

IV. The Emperor – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Emperor builds empires, sometimes on illusion. Gatsby’s mansion is a monument to control, status and longing. He governs his world with precision, but it’s built on sand. The card’s shadow side (rigidity and pride) echoes through every glittering party.

V. The Hierophant – Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu

The Hierophant represents tradition, belief and inherited systems. Sindu’s novel explores what happens when those systems erase who you are. The queer, Sri Lankan-American protagonist navigates cultural expectation and personal truth. This is the Hierophant in tension; where unlearning becomes sacred and living authentically is its own doctrine.

VI. The Lovers – Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson

The Lovers card is about choice, intimacy and consequence. The unnamed, ungendered narrator loves fiercely, ambiguously and without apology. The novel explores desire as devotion and the body as scripture. Love here isn’t tidy, it’s transformative.

VII. The Chariot – Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

The Chariot charges forward with will and motion. The novel’s protagonist escapes prison and plunges into the chaos of Bombay, seeking redemption through action. The novel is kinetic, sprawling and relentless, an ode to movement as survival.

VIII. Strength – Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Strength is not brute force – it’s endurance. Evaristo’s chorus of Black British characters navigate identity, art and history with grace and grit. The novel is a tapestry of courage, where strength is shared not seized.

IX. The Hermit – Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

The Hermit retreats to reflect. Kya lives in solitude, shaped by nature and abandonment. Her isolation becomes her strength, her observation, her wisdom. The novel honours the Hermit’s lantern – guiding from within, not without.

X. Wheel of Fortune – Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

The wheel turns through destiny, chance and karma. Ng’s novel explores how privilege and circumstance shape fate, and how one spark can unravel everything. The Wheel reminds us that control is an illusion and change is inevitable.

XI. Justice – Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Justice is reckoning across generations. Gyasi’s story traces the legacy of slavery through two bloodlines, asking what justice looks like when history is fractured. The novel is a ledger of pain and resilience, where truth is the only inheritance.

XII. The Hanged Man – Butter by Asako Yuzuki

The Hanged Man is self-limiting but surrenders to insight. Butter explores shame, hunger and evolution through a woman accused of feeding men to death. It’s a story of inversion. Where judgment becomes curiosity, and isolation becomes revelation.

XIII. Death – The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Death is not final, it’s a turning. Greene’s novel mourns love, faith and meaning, but finds grace in grief. The affair ends, but the soul awakens. Death here is spiritual, not literal – a passage into something deeper.

XIV. Temperance – A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Temperance seeks harmony amid chaos. Mistry’s characters endure political violence, poverty and loss but their relationships offer fragile hope. The novel is a meditation on balance: between despair and dignity, cruelty and compassion.

XV. The Devil – Insatiable by Daisy Buchanan

The Devil tempts, binds and seduces. The story’s narrator is consumed by desire for love, status and validation. It’s a portrait of obsession, where hunger becomes identity. The card is often a caution – be careful what you crave.

XVI. The Tower – A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

The Tower collapses safety. Yanagihara’s beautifully devastating novel wades into the depths of trauma, friendship and survival. Jude’s life is shattered repeatedly, and yet he endures. Like the card, the novel is brutal, and one you need to brace yourself for.

XVII. The Star – The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

The Star shines after darkness. Jones’ novel is a love story between two enslaved men. It’s tender, luminous and defiant. It’s a beacon in a brutal world, where hope is radical and love is prophecy.

XVIII. The Moon – Luster by Raven Leilani

The Moon distorts, seduces and reveals. Leilani’s protagonist navigates race, desire, and precarity in a surreal domestic landscape. The novel is slippery, shadowed and emotionally raw, where nothing is quite what it seems.

XIX. The Sun – Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

The Sun brings revelation – illuminating truth. Reid’s novel shines a light on performative allyship, class and the messy intersections of race and privilege – with clarity and wit. It’s bright and biting, making room for agency and growth.

XX. Judgement – The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Judgement is about self-evaluation. Tartt’s elite, entitled students commit murder, then unravel. The novel explores guilt, beauty and consequence. And the card asks: what happens when the past calls you to account?

XXI. The World – The List by Yomi Adegoke

The World completes the cycle. Adegoke’s novel explores visibility, digital identity and public reckoning. It’s a full-circle confrontation with power, perception and truth. The World is not closure; it’s arrival.