Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2024 - Nobel Laureates in Literature
- Sara M.
- Thursday, January 18
Collection
Check out a book from this list to fulfill the 2024 Broader Bookshelf prompt "Read a book by a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize winning author". Please note that the Nobel Prize in Literature is given to an author, not a specific book.
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2024 Reading Challenge. Find more lists here.
Telling Tales
Published in 2004
Secondhand Time
Published in 2016
The magnum opus and latest work from Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature?a symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre," describing her work as "a history of emotions?a history of the soul." Alexievich's distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it's like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres?but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. "Through the voices of those who confided in her," The Nation writes, "Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil?in a word, about ourselves." Praise for Svetlana Alexievich and Secondhand Time "For her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." ?Nobel Prize Committee "For the past thirty or forty years [Alexievich has] been busy mapping the Soviet and post-Soviet individual, but [her work is] not really about a history of events. It's a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul." ?Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy " Secondhand Time [is Alexievich's] longest and most ambitious project to date: an effort to use an oral history of the nineties to understand Soviet and post-Soviet identity." ? The New Yorker "In this spellbinding book, Svetlana Alexievich orchestrates a rich symphony of Russian voices telling their stories of love and death, joy and sorrow, as they try to make sense of the twentieth century, so tragic for their country." ?J. M. Coetzee "[Alexievich's] books are woven from hundreds of interviews, in a hybrid form of reportage and oral history that has the quality of a documentary film on paper. But Alexievich is anything but a simple recorder and transcriber of found voices; she has a writerly voice of her own which emerges from the chorus she assembles, with great style and authority, and she shapes her investigations of Soviet and post-Soviet life and death into epic dramatic chronicles as universally essential as Greek tragedies. . . . A mighty documentarian and a mighty artist." ?Philip Gourevitch "Alexievich's voices are those of the people no one cares about, but the ones whose lives constitute the vast majority of what history actually is." ?Keith Gessen From the Hardcover edition.
The Unwomanly Face of War
Published in 2017
A long-awaited English translation of the groundbreaking oral history of women in World War II across Europe and Russia?from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature "A landmark."?Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her invention of "a new kind of literary genre," describing her work as "a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul." In The Unwomanly Face of War, Alexievich chronicles the experiences of the Soviet women who fought on the front lines, on the home front, and in the occupied territories. These women?more than a million in total?were nurses and doctors, pilots, tank drivers, machine-gunners, and snipers. They battled alongside men, and yet, after the victory, their efforts and sacrifices were forgotten. Alexievich traveled thousands of miles and visited more than a hundred towns to record these women's stories. Together, this symphony of voices reveals a different aspect of the war?the everyday details of life in combat left out of the official histories. Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Unwomanly Face of War is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war. "But why? I asked myself more than once. Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? Their words and feelings? They did not believe themselves. A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown . . . I want to write the history of that war. A women's history."?Svetlana Alexievich THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." "Reveals the harrowing, brave, and even quotidian memories of Soviet women whose voices were nearly stifled by the mores of history. These accounts fight our ingrained ideas about what makes a war story." ?Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair "Groundbreaking . . . a mosaic of Russian women's stories?from the home front to the front lines, from foot soldiers to cryptographers to antiaircraft commanders." ? Elle
Voices From Chernobyl
Published in 2015
A journalist by trade, who now suffers from an immune deficiency developed while researching this book, presents personal accounts of what happened to the people of Belarus after the nuclear reactor accident in 1986, and the fear, anger, and uncertainty that they still live with. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
The Bridge on the Drina
Published in 2021
"A hardcover edition of Nobel Prize-winning author Ivo Andric's historical novel about the Balkans, first published in 1945, translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Lovett F. Edwards, with a new introduction by Misha Glenny, a bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times"-- Provided by publisher.
Mr. President
Published in 2022
"Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias's masterpiece-the original Latin American dictator novel and pioneering work of magical realism-in its first new English translation in more than half a century, featuring a foreword by Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. A Penguin Classic. In an unnamed country, an egomaniacal dictator schemes to dispose of a political adversary and maintain his grip on power. As tyranny takes hold, everyone is forced to choose between compromise and death. Inspired by life under the regime of President Manuel Estrada Cabrera of Guatemala, where it was banned for many years, and infused with exuberant lyricism, Mayan symbolism, and Guatemalan vernacular, Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias's magnum opus is at once a surrealist masterpiece, a blade-sharp satire of totalitarianism, and a gripping portrait of psychological terror"--
The Hive
Published in 2023
"The translator Anthony Kerrigan has compared the work of Camilo José Cela, the 1989 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, to that of Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Curzio Malaparte. These are, Kerrigan writes, "ferocious writers, truculent, badly spoken, foul mouthed." However provocative and disturbing, they are also flat-out dazzling as writers, whose sentences, as rigorous as riotous, lodge like knives in the reader's mind. Cela called himself a proponent of "uglyism," of "nothingism." But he has the knack, the critic Américo Castro reminds us, of deploying those "nothings and lacks" to construct beauty. The Hive is set over the course of a few days in the Madrid of 1943, not long after the end of the Spanish Civil War and when the regime of General Francisco Franco was at its most oppressive. The book includes more than three hundred characters whose comings and goings it tracks to hypnotic effect. Scabrous, scandalous, and profane, this virtuosic group portrait of a wounded and sick society was first published in Buenos Aires in 1950 because in Spain it could not be published at all. This new translation by James Womack is the first in English to present Cela's masterpiece in uncensored form"-- Provided by publisher.
The Lyrics
1961-2012
Published in 2016
This collection contains Bob Dylan's lyrics, from his first album, Bob Dylan, to 2012's Tempest.
A Woman's Story
Published in 2003
"A Woman's Story is Annie Ernaux's "deeply affecting account of mothers and daughters, youth and age, and dreams and reality" (Kirkus Reviews). Upon her mother's death from Alzheimer's, Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to "capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris." She explores the bond between mother and daughter, tenuous and unshakable at once, the alienating worlds that separate them, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love. In this quietly powerful tribute, Ernaux attempts to do her mother the greatest justice she can: to portray her as the individual she was. She writes, "I believe I am writing about my mother because it is my turn to bring her into the world."" -- From Amazon
A Girl's Story
Published in 2020
"In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, Annie Ernaux revisits the night 50 years earlier when she found herself submerged and controlled by another person's desire and willpower. It is the summer of 1958, the year she turned 18. And then the man she gave herself to moves on. She has submitted her will to his, and now she finds that she is a slave without a master. Now, fifty years later, she realizes she can obliterate the intervening years and return to consider this young woman that until now she wanted to forget completely. And to discover that here was the vital, violent and dolorous origin of her writing life, her writer's identity, built out of shame, violence, betrayal"-- Provided by publisher.
Light in August
The Corrected Text
Published in 1990
In a novel about hopeless perseverance in the face of mortality, guileless Lena Grove searches for the father of her unborn child, Reverend Hightower is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen, and drifter Joe Christmas is consumed by his mixed ancestry
The Sound and the Fury
The Corrected Text
Published in 1990
Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their Black servant.
The Other Name
Septology I-II
Published in 2019
The Other Name follows the lives of two men living close to each other on the west coast of Norway. The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his neighbor Asleik, a bachelor and traditional Norwegian fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in Bjørgvin, a couple hours' drive south of Dylgja, where he lives. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter. He and the narrator are doppelgangers--two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life. Written in hypnotic prose that shifts between the first and third person, The Other Name calls into question concrete notions around subjectivity and the self. What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Through flashbacks, Fosse deftly explores the convergences and divergences in the lives of both Asles, slowly building towards a decisive encounter between them both. A writer at the zenith of his career, with The Other Name, the first two volumes in his Septology, Fosse presents us with an indelible and poignant exploration of the human condition that will endure as his masterpiece.
The Forsyte Saga
Complete Three Volumes
Published in 2015
"Vicissitudes of leading members of upper class British family"--Page [4] of cover.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Published in 2006
Tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town.
The Immoralist
Published in 1970
A translation of Gide's classic psychological novel depicting the gradual degeneration of an idealistic young scholar.
Afterlives
Published in 2022
"From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa. When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza too, is back from the war. He was not stolen but sold into service, where he became the protégé of an officer whose special interest has left him literally scarred for life. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he seeks only steady work and safety - until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, ready to snatch them up and once again carry them away. Spanning from the end of the nineteenth century, when the Europeans carved up Africa, on through the tumultuous decades of revolt and suppression that followed, AFTERLIVES is an astonishingly moving portrait of survivors refusing to sacrifice their humanity to the violent forces that assail them"-- Provided by publisher.
The Buried Giant
Published in 2015
From the author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But, at least, the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. Axl and Beatrice, a couple of elderly Britons, decide that now is the time, finally, for them to set off across this troubled land of mist and rain to find the son they have not seen for years, the son they can scarcely remember. They know they will face many hazards--some strange and otherworldly--but they cannot foresee how their journey will reveal to them the dark and forgotten corners of their love for each other. Nor can they foresee that they will be joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and a knight--each of them, like Axl and Beatrice, lost in some way to his own past, but drawn inexorably toward the comfort, and the burden, of the fullness of a life's memories. Sometimes savage, sometimes mysterious, always intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in a decade tells a luminous story about the act of forgetting and the power of memory, a resonant tale of love, vengeance, and war. From the Hardcover edition.
Never Let Me Go
Published in 2005
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human. Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.
The Remains of the Day
Published in 2010
The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking, pitch-perfect novel -- namely, Stevens' own ability to allow some bit of life-affirming love into his tightly repressed existence.
Klara and the Sun
Published in 2021
"From her place in the store that sells artificial friends, Klara--an artificial friend with outstanding observational qualities--watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara she is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In this luminous tale, Klara and the Sun, Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?"-- Provided by publisher.
Snow Country
Published in 1996
With the brushstroke suggestiveness and astonishing grasp of motive that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, Yasunari Kawabata tells a story of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan, the snowiest region on earth. It is there, at an isolated mountain hotspring, that the wealthy sophisticate Shimamura meets the geisha Komako, who gives herself to him without regrets, knowing that their passion cannot last. Shimamura is a dilettante of the feelings; Komako has staked her life on them. Their affair can have only one outcome. Yet, in chronicling its doomed course, one of Japan's greatest modern writers creates a novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.
The Changeling
Published in 1992
A farmer's wife becomes the foster mother of a troll's child and her humanistic treatment of the changeling eventually secures the return of her own son.
It Can't Happen Here
Published in 2005
A New England newspaper editor fights to destroy the fascist dictatorship established by President Berzelius Windrip in this classic work by the author of Babbit, Arrowsmith, and Main Street that prophesizes the coming of totalitarianism in the United States.
Palace Walk
Published in 2011
Introduces us to Sayyid's gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons -- the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. The family's trials mirror those of their country during the years spanning the two world wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries.
In the Café of Lost Youth
Published in 2016
"Who was Louki? Did anyone really know? She made her mark on all of us in different ways. We all remember her, some of us more than others, but did any of us truly know her? Can anyone honestly say they know another person? In the Cafe of Lost Youth is vintage Patrick Modiano, an absorbing evocation of a particular Paris of the 1950s, shadowy and shady, a secret world of writers, criminals, drinkers, and drifters. The novel, which includes vignettes of a number of historical figures and is inspired in part by the circle (depicted in the photographs of Ed van der Elsken) of the notorious and charismatic Guy Debord, centers on the enigmatic, waiflike figure of Louki, who catches everyone's attention even as she eludes possession or comprehension. Through the eyes of four very different narrators, we contemplate Louki's character and her fate, while Modiano explores the themes of identity, memory, time, and forgetting that are at the heart of his hypnotic and deeply moving art"-- Provided by publisher.
The Collected Poems of Eugenio Montale 1925-1977
Published in 2012
An English-language translation of works by the late Nobel Prize winner offers insight into his role in influencing Italian poetry and international Modernism, as well as his views on such topics as modernity, fascism, and war.
Beloved
Published in 2004
Sethe, an escaped slave living in post-Civil War Ohio with her daughter and mother-in-law, is persistently haunted by the ghost of her dead baby girl.
The Bluest Eye
A Novel
Published in 2007
Pecola Breedlove, a young eleven-year-old black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dreams grow more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity.--from publisher's description.
Song of Solomon
Published in 2004
A cloth bag containing ten copies of the title, that may also include a folder with miscellaneous notes, discussion questions, biographical information, and reading lists to assist book group discussion leaders.
The Hunger Angel
A Novel
Published in 2012
Traces the experiences of Leo Auberg, who, after five torturous years in a post-war Soviet Union labor camp, succumbs to a hallucinatory existence where hunger and everyday objects take on anthropomorphic qualities.
Dear Life
Stories
Published in 2012
A collection of stories illuminates moments that shape a life, from a dream or a sexual act to simple twists of fate, and is set in the countryside and towns of Lake Huron.
Las Lunas De Júpiter
Published in 2013
"...Pero los hechos que realmente subyacen en Las lunas de Júpiter son las transformaciones que sufren los personajes con el paso del tiempo hasta observar su pasado9 con la ira, el resentimiento y la compasión infinita que nadie sabe comunicarnos como Alice Munro."-- Provided by publisher.
Book of Questions
Selections = Libro De Las Preguntas
Published in 2022
Esta edición bilingüe español-inglés es la primera selección completamente ilustrada del «Libro de las Preguntas». Compuesto por 70 preguntas de las 320 originales, estos poemas, cuidadosamente entretejidos por tema e ilustraciones a toda página, nos invitan a maravillarnos con el mundo natural y los innumerables misterios que contiene. «El Libro de las Preguntas», escrito por el querido poeta chileno y ganador del Premio Nobel Neruda, se completó pocos meses antes de su muerte en 1973, y es su última gran obra poética. A su vez lírico y cósmico, onírico y absurdo, paradójico y lúdico, cada una de estas preguntas sin respuesta nos pide que dejemos de lado la certeza y la restricción y nos entremos en la inmensidad de lo desconocido. Con acertijos como «¿Dónde está el centro del mar? / ¿Por qué las olas no rompen allí?» y «¿Cómo llamas a una flor / que revolotea de pájaro en pájaro?», Neruda nos inspira a desentrañar nuestras suposiciones y repensar nuestra relación con la naturaleza. La única respuesta que seguramente surgirá de estas preguntas es una observación y una reflexión más cercanas sobre el mundo en el que vivimos, y un sentido renovado de curiosidad y asombro por nuestro universo compartido.
The Museum of Innocence
Published in 2009
It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Fusun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Thus begins an obsessive but tragic love affair that will transform itself into a compulsive collection of objects--a museum of one man's broken heart--that chronicle Kemal's lovelorn progress and his afflicted heart's reactions.
Nights of Plague
Published in 2022
"A new book by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Part detective story, part historical epic--a bold and brilliant novel that imagines a plague taking over a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire. It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingeria--the 29th state of the Ottoman Empire--located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives--brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca, or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria--the island revolts. To stop the epidemic, the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II sends his most accomplished quarantine expert to the island--an Orthodox Christian. Some of the Muslims, including followers of a popular religious sect and its leader Sheikh H, refuse to take precautions or respect the quarantine. And the sultan's expert is murdered. As the plague continues its rapid spread, the sultan sends a second doctor to the island, this time a Muslim, and strict quarantine measures are declared. But the incompetence of the island's governor and local administration and the people's refusal to respect the bans dooms the quarantine to failure, and the death count continues to rise. Faced with the danger that the plague might spread to the West and to Istanbul, the sultan bows to international pressure and allows foreign and Ottoman warships to blockade the island. Now the people of Mingeria are on their own, and they must find a way to defeat the plague themselves. Steeped in history and rife with suspense, Nights of Plague is an epic story set more than one hundred years ago with themes that feel remarkably contemporary"-- Provided by publisher.
Doctor Zhivago
Published in 2011
Overview: First published in Italy in 1957 amidst international controversy, Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Here is a masterful chronicle of its outbreak and the consequences: army revolts, irrational killings, starvation, epidemics, Communist Party inquisitions. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago's love for the tender and beautiful Lara: pursued, found, and lost again, Lara is the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times. This edition (the only paperback edition now available) includes an introduction by the distinguished Oxford University scholar John Bayley. It reacquaints a new generation of readers with the controversy surrounding the original publication of Doctor Zhivago and places the book in the context of Soviet literary history and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Lucky Per
Published in 2019
"A true neglected classic, this sweeping 1904 novel is a Modernist masterpiece and arguably "the great Danish novel"-- but is only newly available in English. Lucky Per is a bildungsroman about the ambitious son of a clergyman who rejects his faith and flees his restricted life in the Danish countryside for the capital city. Per is a gifted young man who arrives in Copenhagen believing that "you had to hunt down luck as if it were a wild creature, a crooked-fanged beast. and capture and bind it." Per's love interest, a Jewish heiress, is both the strongest character in the book and one of the greatest Jewish heroines of European literature. Per becomes obsessed with a grand engineering scheme that he believes will reshape both Denmark's landscape and its minor place in the world; eventually, both his personal and his career ambitions come to grief. At its heart, the story revolves around the question of the relationship of "luck" to "happiness" (the Danish word in the title can have both meanings), a relationship Per comes to see differently by the end of his life"-- Provided by publisher.
The Conquest of Happiness
Published in 2013
In The Conquest of Happiness, first published in 1930, iconoclastic philosopher Bertrand Russell attempted to diagnose the myriad causes of unhappiness in modern life and chart a path out of the seemingly inescapable malaise so prevalent even in safe and prosperous Western societies. More than eighty years later, Russell's wisdom remains as true as it was on its initial release. Eschewing guilt-based morality, Russell lays out a rationalist prescription for living a happy life, including the importance of cultivating interests outside oneself and the dangers of passive pleasure. In this new edition, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett reintroduces Russell to a new generation.
Blindness
Published in 1999
"A city is struck by an epidemic of "white blindness." Authorities confine the blind to a vacant mental hospital secured by armed guards under instructions to shoot anyone trying to escape. Inside, the criminal element among the blind holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers--among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears--through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twientieth century, Blindness is a powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses--and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit"--P. 4 of cover.
Nausea
Published in 2013
French writer Antoine Roquentin is disgusted at his own existence and catalogs his every thought and feeling.
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956
An Experiment in Literary Investigation. Vol. 1
Published in 2007
"In this masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn has orchestrated thousands of incidents and individual histories into one narrative of unflagging power and momentum. Written in a tone that encompasses Olympian wrath, bitter calm, savage irony, and sheer comedy, it combines history, autobiography, documentary, and political analysis as it examines in its totality the Soviet apparatus of repression from its inception following the October Revolution of 1917. This first volume involves us in the innocent victim's arrest and preliminary detention and the stages by which he is transferred across the breadth of the Soviet Union to his ultimate destination: the hard labor camp."--Publisher's description.
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
Published in 2021
"In an imaginary Nigeria, a cunning entrepreneur is selling body parts stolen from Dr. Menka's hospital for use in ritualistic practices. Dr. Menka shares the grisly news with his oldest college friend, bon viveur, star engineer, and Yoruba royal, Duyole Pitan-Payne. The life of every party, Duyole is about to assume a prestigious post at the United Nations in New York, but it now seems that someone is deter­mined that he not make it there. And neither Dr. Menka nor Duyole knows why, or how close the enemy is, or how powerful. [This book] is at once a literary hoot, a crafty whodunit, and a scathing indictment of political and social corrup­tion."--Dust jacket flap.
Cannery Row
Published in 2002
Vividly depicts the colorful, sometimes disreputable, inhabitants of a run-down area in Monterey, California.
Paper Boats
Published in 1992
A child launches paper boats hoping someone in another country will find them.
The Books of Jacob, Or, A Fantastic Journey Across Seven Borders, Five Languages, and Three Major Religions, Not Counting the Minor Sects. Told by the Dead, Supplemented by the Author, Drawing from a Range of Books, and Aided by Imagination, the Which Being the Greatest Natural Gift of Any Person. That the Wise Might Have It for a Record, That My Compatriots Reflect, Laypersons Gain Some Understanding, and Melancholy Souls Obtain Some Slight Enjoyment
Published in 2022
"In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas-and a new unrest-begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank-a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day-is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries-those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is-The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence"-- Provided by publisher
Kristin Lavransdatter
Published in 2005
"The finest historical novel our 20th century has yet produced; indeed it dwarfs most of the fiction of any kind that Europe has produced in the last twenty years." ? Contemporary Movements in European Literature, edited by William Rose and J. Isaacs "As a novel it must be ranked with the greatest the world knows today." ? Montreal Star "Sigrid Undset's trilogy embodies more of life, seen understandingly and seriously... than any novel since Dostoievsky's Brothers Karamazov. It is also very probably the noblest work of fiction ever to have been inspired by the Catholic art of life." ? Commonweal "No other novelist, past or present, has bodied forth the medieval world with such richness and fullness of indisputable genius.... One of the finest minds in European literature." ? New York Herald Tribune "This trilogy is the first great story founded upon the normal events of a normal woman's existence. It is as great and as rich, as simple and as profound, as such a story should be." ? Ruth Suckow in the Des Moines Register
The Dream of the Celt
Published in 2012
"In 1916, the Irish nationalist Roger Casement was hanged by the British government for treason. Casement had dedicated his extraordinary life to improving the plight of oppressed peoples around the world--especially the native populations in the Belgian Congo and the Amazon--but when he dared to draw a parallel between the injustices he witnessed in African and American colonies and those committed by the British in Northern Ireland, he became involved in a cause that led to his imprisonment and execution. Ultimately, the scandals surrounding Casement's trial and eventual hanging tainted his image to such a degree that his pioneering human rights work wasn't fully reexamined until the 1960s."--Dust jacket.
The Neighborhood
A Novel
Published in 2018
One day Enrique, a high-profile businessman, receives a visit from Rolando Garro, the editor of a notorious magazine that specializes in salacious exposés. Garro presents Enrique with lewd pictures from an old business trip and demands that he invest in the magazine. Enrique refuses, and the next day the pictures are on the front page. Meanwhile, Enrique's wife is in the midst of a passionate and secret affair with the wife of Enrique's lawyer and best friend. When Garro shows up murdered, the two couples are thrown into a whirlwind of navigating Peru's unspoken laws and customs, while the staff of the magazine embark on their greatest exposé yet.