The 19th-century Russian writer Ivan Turgenev is referenced several times in the book. Turgenev's texts (including First Love, The Hunting Sketches, and Fathers and Sons) are similar to the mood of Ka's internal world: sensitive and melancholic.
Other novels with a similar East versus West theme, touching on Orientalism, are Ten Things I Hate About Me by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Compass by Mathias Énard.