100 Best Modernist Books of All Time

We've researched and ranked the best modernist books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more

Featuring recommendations from Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, and 190 other experts.
1

The Great Gatsby

A young man, newly rich, tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married. less

Barack ObamaWhen he got to high school, the president said, his tastes changed and he learned to enjoy classics like “Of Mice and Men” and “The Great Gatsby.” (Source)

Bill GatesMelinda and I really like [this book]. When we were first dating, she had a green light that she would turn on when her office was empty and it made sense for me to come over. (Source)

Marvin LiaoFor Non-Business, I'd have to say Dune (Herbert), Emergency (Strauss), The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) or Flint (L'Amour). I re-read these books every year because they are just so well written & great stories that I get new perspective & details every time I read them. (Source)

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2

1984

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick

With extraordinary relevance and renewed popularity, George Orwell’s 1984 takes on new life in this hardcover edition.

“Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.”—The New Yorker
 
In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave...
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Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Steve Jobscalled this book "one of his favorite" and recommended it to the hires. The book also inspired one the greatest TV ad (made by Jobs) (Source)

D J TaylorIn terms of how technology is working in our modern surveillance powers, it’s a terrifyingly prophetic book in some of its implications for 21st-century human life. Orwell would deny that it was prophecy; he said it was a warning. But in fact, distinguished Orwell scholar Professor Peter Davis once made a list of all the things that Orwell got right, and it was a couple of fairly long paragraphs,... (Source)

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3

Mrs. Dalloway

In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party preparation while in her mind she is much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house, she is flooded with far-away remembrances. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices she has made, hesitantly looking ahead to growing old. Undeniably triumphant, this is the inspired novelistic outline of human consciousness. less
Recommended by Charles Fernyhough, Maria Sveland, and 2 others.

Charles FernyhoughWoolf is interested in the intersections between minds. She’s trying to show how minds bleed into each other. (Source)

Maria SvelandIt’s one of the saddest books I’ve ever read. I could really identify with Clarissa, this empty, poor person who is going out to find some flowers for a party. At the same moment, we are following her out into the beautiful morning as the story starts. It’s clear very soon that Clarissa is a woman who has lost her soul among all the duties and conventions of a boring marriage. That loss is so... (Source)

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4

To the Lighthouse

For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged.
To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionist depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on a marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bitterness. Its use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence and shifting perspectives, gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an...
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Recommended by Hermione Lee, Deborah Levy, and 2 others.

Hermione LeeWhen all is said and done, I think it is her greatest novel. (Source)

Deborah LevyAristotle tells us that all politics starts in the family, and you really do see that in To the Lighthouse. Woolf always said that there is no symbolism in the lighthouse at all, and I think we should believe her. All the same, I do think that the lighthouse, in a way, is Mrs Ramsay because the lighthouse is there to protect us from harm and from hazards, and Mrs Ramsay is a self-sacrificing,... (Source)

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5

Ulysses

Loosely based on the Odyssey, this landmark of modern literature follows ordinary Dubliners in 1904. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, and a scintillating cast of supporting characters, Joyce pushes Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. Captivating experimental techniques range from interior monologues to exuberant wordplay and earthy humor. A major achievement in 20th century literature. less

Debbie MillmanI also really love a line from [this book], which is 'The longest way around is the shortest way home.' (Source)

Robin RobertsonThere is more going on in one sentence in Ulysses than there is in most contemporary novels. (Source)

Robin RobertsonThere is more going on in one sentence in Ulysses than there is in most contemporary novels. (Source)

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6

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / Dubliners

Widely regarded as the greatest stylist of twentieth-century English literature, James Joyce deserves the term “revolutionary.” His literary experiments in form and structure, language and content, signaled the modernist movement and continue to influence writers today. His two earliest, and perhaps most accessible, successes—A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners—are here brought together in one volume. Both works reflect Joyce’s lifelong love-hate relationship with Dublin and the Irish culture that formed him.

In the semi-autobiographical Portrait, young Stephen...
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Recommended by Richard Bourke, and 1 others.

Richard BourkeJoyce’s depiction is one of Ireland in the aftermath of the fall of Charles Stewart Parnell. (Source)

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7

Dubliners

For the centennial of its original publication, an irresistible Graphic Deluxe Edition of one of the most beloved books of the 20th century

Perhaps the greatest short story collection in the English language, James Joyce’s Dubliners is a vivid and unflinching portrait of “dear dirty Dublin” at the turn of the twentieth century. These fifteen stories, including such unforgettable ones as “Araby,” “Grace,” and “The Dead,” delve into the heart of the city of Joyce’s birth, capturing the cadences of Dubliners’ speech and portraying with an almost brute realism their...
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Recommended by David Grossman, and 1 others.

David GrossmanIt is the perfect story—you can almost touch the characters, and yet it is told from a remote point of view, from a distance but not without affection (Source)

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8

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea, an apparently simple fable, represents the mature Hemingway at his best. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature soon after its publication, and half a century later it is still one of his most read books. less

Jack DorseyI keep coming back to it. I love the straightforwardness, the tightness, and the poetry. I think it shows a common struggle that is repeated over and over in so many narratives both fictional and nonfictional. (Source)

Jordan B PetersonThe Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway https://t.co/7dJE4Pfn56, a book from my great books list https://t.co/AxBNX3QpMb (Source)

May WitwitI taught this book to my students in Iraq during the economic sanctions. And I feel like it gave me some kind of strength to continue. (Source)

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9

Animal Farm

Animal Farm is one of the most famous warnings ever written. Orwell's immortal satire - 'against Stalin' as he wrote to his French translator - can be read on many levels. With its piercing clarity and deceptively simple style it is no surprise that this novel is required reading for schoolchildren and politicians alike. This fable of the steadfast horses Boxer and Clover, the opportunistic pigs Snowball and Napoleon, and the deafening choir of sheep remains an unparalleled masterpiece.





One reviewer wrote 'In a hundred years' time perhaps Animal...
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Whitney Cummings[Whitney Cummings recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

Vlad TenevWhen I was in sixth grade I remember being very upset by the ending of [this book]. (Source)

Sol OrwellQuestion: What books had the biggest impact on you? Perhaps changed the way you see things or dramatically changed your career path. Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 (though Huxley's Brave New World is a better reflection of today's society). (Source)

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10

Brave New World

Now reissued in a gorgeous hardcover edition: "one of the most prophetic dystopian works of the 20th century" (Wall Street Journal) must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit in the face of our "brave new world." Huxley's masterpiece has become a bestseller once again after the American election.

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically...
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Yuval Noah HarariThe most prophetic book of the 20th century. Today many people would easily mistake it for a utopia. (Source)

Ellen Wayland-SmithIt is a hilarious, and also very prescient, parody of utopias. Huxley goes back to the idea that coming together and forming a community of common interests is a great idea – it’s the basis of civil society. At the same time, when communities of common interests are taken to utopian degrees the self starts to dissolve into the larger community, you lose privacy and interiority; that becomes... (Source)

John QuigginThe lesson I draw from this is that the purpose of utopia is not so much as an achieved state, as to give people the freedom to pursue their own projects. That freedom requires that people are free of the fear of unemployment, or of financial disaster through poor healthcare. They should be free to have access to the kind of resources they need for their education and we should maintain and... (Source)

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Don't have time to read the top Modernist books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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11

The Sound and the Fury

This is an alternate cover ed. for ISBN 0679732241.

The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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12

Orlando

Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in... more
Recommended by Andrei Codrescu, and 1 others.

Andrei CodrescuThis is Woolf’s mysterious and magical insight into the cyclical, sexual nature of time. It’s her most beautiful writing too, in my opinion. (Source)

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13

The Catcher in the Rye

The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this... more

Bill GatesOne of my favorite books ever. (Source)

Woody AllenIt was such a relief from the other books I was reading at the time, which all had a quality of homework to them. (Source)

Chigozie ObiomaHe sees everybody as phony because they take life too seriously. (Source)

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14

Lolita

When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness.

Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's...
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Richard CohenIt’s more imbued with references to the sun and using the sun as symbol or metaphor – almost a kind of character in the novel – than any other work in literature. (Source)

Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)

Steven AmsterdamWhat’s spectacular for me is the triumph of the humour over his loathsomeness. (Source)

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15

A Farewell to Arms

The Hemingway Library Edition

Presented by Patrick and Seán Hemingway, this augmented edition of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel of love during wartime features early drafts and, for the first time, all of the author’s alternate endings.

Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield—weary, demoralized men marching in...
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Jordan B PetersonA Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway https://t.co/dwAYVoKl3K, a book from my great books list https://t.co/AxBNX3QpMb (Source)

Julia EnthovenFor non-business, I’ve loved so many different books that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Recently, I’ve enjoyed The Art of Fielding and Americanah, and I love classics like A Farewell to Arms and Lord of the Flies. (Source)

Jordan Peterson[Jordan Peterson recommended this book on his website.] (Source)

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16

The Master & Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov's devastating satire of Soviet life was written during the darkest period of Stalin's regime. Combining two distinct yet interwoven parts—one set in ancient Jerusalem, one in contemporary Moscow—the novel veers from moods of wild theatricality with violent storms, vampire attacks, and a Satanic ball; to such somber scenes as the meeting of Pilate and Yeshua, and the murder of Judas in the moonlit garden of Gethsemane; to the substanceless, circus-like reality of Moscow. Its central characters, Woland (Satan) and his retinue—including the vodka-drinking black cat, Behemoth;... more

Neil Gaiman@Slavinskas_art I love that book. (Source)

Max LevchinOne of the finest works of fiction of the last century. (Source)

Rupert IsaacsonIt’s all about compassion for yourself, for others and really how ultimately that’s all that matters. (Source)

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17

East of Eden

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most... more

Oprah WinfreyIt's the perfect summer read...a novel so rich and full of drama you won't be able to turn the pages fast enough! (Source)

John Lilly@ben_mathes @kevinakwok @samhinkie @aweissman Amazing book. Ive always liked it better than Grapes of Wrath. (Source)

Steve BenjaminsMy favorite non-business book is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I think all of John Steinbeck’s books are uplifting. He sees the best in humanity and it leaves me feeling warm and generous. (Source)

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18

As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members -- including Addie herself -- as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama, As I Lay Dying is a true 20th-century classic.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as...
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19

The Waves

Set on the coast of England against the vivid background of the sea, The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing them through their thoughts and interior soliloquies. As their understanding of nature’s trials grows, the chorus of narrative voices blends together in miraculous harmony, remarking not only on the inevitable death of individuals but on the eternal connection of everyone.... more
Recommended by Grey Baker, and 1 others.

Grey BakerThe language is so beautiful, and was so different to anything I’d read before. I remember feeling swept along by it for hours. (Source)

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20

Invisible Man

First published in 1952 and immediately hailed as a masterpiece, Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it gives us an entirely new model of what a novel can be.

As he journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying "battle royal" where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist...
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Barack ObamaAs a devoted reader, the president has been linked to a lengthy list of novels and poetry collections over the years — he admits he enjoys a thriller. (Source)

Jacqueline NovogratzI read it as a 22-year-old, and it made me think deeply about how society doesn’t “see” so many of its members. (Source)

Dan BarreiroRiveting time capsule material. Literary giant Ellison on the blues, on race, on his powerful book, Invisible Man. https://t.co/iS6xQ7ojE8 (Source)

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Don't have time to read the top Modernist books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
21

The Trial

Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka's death, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. This new edition is based upon the work of... more

David Heinemeier HanssonIt’s a fascinating writing style with a 3rd party observer that’s treated as an extension of the protagonists own sentiments and mind. It’s also just exquisitely written. And the concept of being on trial for charges unknown by a vast, impersonal, yet petty, bureaucracy pulls from a timeless well of societal anxieties. So far, so very good. About half way through. (Source)

Michael PeelI read this before going to Nigeria but moving there made me think about it a lot. The idea that the system always wins. (Source)

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22

Waiting for Godot

The story revolves around two seemingly homeless men simply waiting for someone—or something—named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree, inhabiting a drama spun of their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as mankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett’s language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existential post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time. less
Recommended by Elon Musk, and 1 others.

Elon MuskHave recently come to appreciate the awesome, absurdist humor of [this book]. (Source)

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23

The Sun Also Rises

The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway’s masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style.

A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway’s most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. First published in 1926,...
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Recommended by Wai Chee Dimock, and 1 others.

Wai Chee DimockMany people don’t appreciate what a big commitment writing this novel was for Hemingway. He was used to writing short stories. It meant he had to spend a lot of time on one book that could have been spent more profitably writing short stories. Like many of Hemingway’s later novels, it is stitched together from shorter pieces – in this case, what he’d already written about Pamplona. (Source)

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24

The Stranger

Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in English in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward. less

David Heinemeier HanssonSeminal novel on existentialism and the absurd by Albert Camus from 1946. Explores that feeling of disconnectedness from society, its norms, and the absurdity of every day life. Striking first-person account in a powerful, direct language. (Source)

Kyle Maynard[Kyle Maynard said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)

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25

The Metamorphosis

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's...
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Recommended by David Lynch, David Lynch, and 2 others.

David Lynch[David Lynch said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)

David Lynch[David Lynch said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)

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26

A Room of One's Own

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in... more

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27

The Waste Land

The text of Eliot's 1922 masterpiece is accompanied by thorough explanatory annotations as well as by Eliot's own knotty notes, some of which require annotation themselves.

For ease of reading, this Norton Critical Edition presents The Waste Land as it first appeared in the American edition (Boni & Liveright), with Eliot's notes at the end. "Contexts" provides readers with invaluable materials on The Waste Land's sources, composition, and publication history. "Criticism" traces the poem's reception with twenty-five reviews and essays, from first reactions through the end of the...
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28

Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)

Swann's Way tells two related stories, the first of which revolves around Marcel, a younger version of the narrator, and his experiences in, and memories of, the French town Combray. Inspired by the "gusts of memory" that rise up within him as he dips a Madeleine into hot tea, the narrator discusses his fear of going to bed at night. He is a creature of habit and dislikes waking up in the middle of the night not knowing where he is.

He claims that people are defined by the objects that surround them and must piece together their identities bit by bit each time they wake up. The...
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Recommended by Thomas Graziani, and 1 others.

Thomas GrazianiMy favorite book is like "A la recherche du temps perdu" ("In Search of Lost Time”) from Marcel Proust. It is a seven-volumes epic work describing the intricacies of human nature. Proust style is among the most beautiful I've ever read, and he manages to really make you consider every aspect of your daily life in a different and deeper way. (Source)

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29

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad, was originally a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899. It is a story within a story, following a character named Charlie Marlow, who recounts his adventure to a group of men onboard an anchored ship. The story told is of his early life as a ferry boat captain. Although his job was to transport ivory downriver, Charlie develops an interest in investing an ivory procurement agent, Kurtz, who is employed by the government. Preceded by his reputation as a brilliant emissary of progress, Kurtz has now established himself as a god among the... more

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30

Of Mice and Men

The compelling story of two outsiders striving to find their place in an unforgiving world.

Drifters in search of work, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie have nothing in the world except each other and a dream -- a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California’s Salinas Valley, but their hopes are doomed as Lennie, struggling against extreme cruelty, misunderstanding and feelings of jealousy, becomes a victim of his own strength.

Tackling universal themes such as the friendship of a shared vision,...
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Recommended by Barack Obama, Steve Benjamins, and 2 others.

Barack ObamaWhen he got to high school, the president said, his tastes changed and he learned to enjoy classics like “Of Mice and Men” and “The Great Gatsby.” (Source)

Steve BenjaminsI think all of John Steinbeck’s books are uplifting. He sees the best in humanity and it leaves me feeling warm and generous. I always love this paragraph in Of Mice and Men that hints at the tension between business and humanity: "It has always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honestly, understanding, and feeling are the concomitants of... (Source)

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Don't have time to read the top Modernist books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
31

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Hemingway's classic novel of the Spanish Civil War. In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war; three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. Surpassing his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway creates a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the... more

Josh WaitzkinExquisite novel. (Source)

Jordan B PetersonFor Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway https://t.co/1DfwVoZDRJ, a book from my great books list https://t.co/AxBNX3QpMb (Source)

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32

Collected Poems, 1909-1962

There is no more authoritative collection of the poetry that T.S. Eliot himself wished to preserve than this volume, published two years before his death in 1965.

Poet, dramatist, critic, and editor, T. S. Eliot was one of the defining figures of twentieth-century poetry. This edition of Collected Poems 1909-1962 includes his verse from Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) to Four Quartets (1943), and includes such literary landmarks as 'The Waste Land' and 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'.
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Recommended by M C Beaton, and 1 others.

M C BeatonA lot of his poetry has gone into general usage. Being a city person, I also like the atmosphere of the city, of London, the descriptions of fog that I remember from my youth. (Source)

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33
Few readers need any introduction to the work of the most influential poet of the twentieth century. In addition to the title poem, this selecion includes "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "Gerontion", "Ash Wednesday", and other poems from Mr. Eliot's early and middle work.

"In ten years' time," wrote Edmund Wilson in Axel0s Castle (1931), "Eliot has left upon English poetry a mark more unmistakable than that of any other poet writing in English." In 1948 Mr. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his work as trail-blazing pioneer of modern poetry".
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34

Ficciones

Jorge Luis Borges was one of those very rare creators who changed the face of an art form—in his case, the short story. His work has been paid the ultimate honor of being appropriated and imitated by innumerable writers on every continent of the world. The seventeen brief masterpieces of FICCIONES explode the boundaries of genre, offering up labyrinthine libraries, a fictional encyclopedia entry that spawns an entire world, a review of a nonexistent writer’s attempt to re-create Don Quixote word for word, a man with the disabling inability to forget anything he has ever experienced, and other... more

Nassim Nicholas TalebThis is something very hard to find, almost by definition: a literary writer who thinks in abstract terms (the only other such author I've read is Stanislaw Lem). These are philosophical thought experiments in their purest form, yet somehow magically delivered in a playful literary athmosphere. Borges is a mathematical philosopher, first and last. Ignore the "Latin American" categorization and... (Source)

Viktor Mayer-SchönbergerBorges asks what happens if we can’t forget? Will we be forever tied to an excruciatingly detailed past? Or will we be able to forget parts of it over time and therefore be able to evolve and move on? (Source)

Mohsin HamidThere is a transnational quality to Borges’s writing. (Source)

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35

The Grapes of Wrath

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers.

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic...
more

Elizabeth Tsurkov@Maysaloon great book! (Source)

Jonathan EvisonThis is the great American novel for me—the humanity, the landscapes, the progressive and political and social ethos of the novel, not to mention the amazing characters. Steinbeck is the American Dickens, at least in terms of social consciousness. (Source)

John KerryWhile there is a story that takes place between characters, the hardship and unfairness is a central element of the book. It shows how fiction can create progressive change as well. (Source)

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36
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute... more

Esther PerelYou can reread the Russians. They are timeless. (Source)

Irvine WelshIt is not a crime book in the way that we understand crime fiction today. Instead it is like an existential psychological thriller. (Source)

Ben Domenech@SohrabAhmari @li88yinc @jgcrum @BlueBoxDave @InezFeltscher @JarrettStepman Maybe the best book ever written. (Source)

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37
For this complete, authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of 'À la recherche du temps perdu' (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). less

Alain de BottonAbout a search for how you can stop wasting your life and start to appreciate life and live fully. (Source)

Carlo RovelliProust’s reflection on the nature of time is deep and spread over his writing. (Source)

Viktor Mayer-SchönbergerA famous masterpiece which is an excruciatingly detailed chronicle of Proust’s life in which every single element and thought is captured and retold. (Source)

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38

Steppenwolf

A Novel

Steppenwolf is a poetical self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope. Yet this novel can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of the period. As Hesse himself remarked, "Of all my books Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any other". less
Recommended by Amanda Palmer, Sanja Zepan, and 2 others.

Amanda PalmerHas a fantastical realism that pierces to the bottom of the psyche. I've re-read and re-read this sucker every five years. (Source)

Sanja ZepanFavourite non-business book would be Der Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse. It's a book that's often read by privileged people who feel misunderstood (usually teens), so everyone focuses on the first part about loneliness in the bourgeois world and forgets about the whole second part of the book that's about overcoming that and finding a sense of humour, a shift in perspective, and a bit of distance.... (Source)

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39

Tender Is the Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a friend's copy of Tender Is the Night, "If you liked The Great Gatsby, for God's sake read this. Gatsby was a tour de force but this is a confession of faith." Set in the South of France in the decade after World War I, Tender Is the Night is the story of a brilliant and magnetic psychiatrist named Dick Diver; the bewitching, wealthy, and dangerously unstable mental patient, Nicole, who becomes his wife; and the beautiful, harrowing ten-year pas de deux they act out along the border between sanity and madness.
In Tender Is...
more
Recommended by Leo Babauta, and 1 others.

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40

The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology. and horoscope. When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague."Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of... more
Recommended by Tyler Cowen, and 1 others.

Tyler CowenThis is a book of ideas. It’s not a book about the internet. It was written much earlier, in the 20th century, and written in Portuguese. It’s really a book of meditations. It’s very philosophical. It applies to the internet in that the main point is how much joy you can take in small things and small changes and the true drama of life can be extraordinarily minute in scale, and this, I think,... (Source)

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41

A Room with a View

"But you do," he went on, not waiting for contradiction. "You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you, and no other word expresses it ..."

Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George.

Lucy finds herself...
more
Recommended by Hind Makki, and 1 others.

Hind MakkiA Room With a View. The book is great. The movie is better. https://t.co/Q8E0KXD4kj (Source)

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42

Hunger

First published in Norway in 1890, Hunger probes into the depths of consciousness with frightening and gripping power. Like the works of Dostoyevsky, it marks an extraordinary break with Western literary and humanistic traditions.

Librarian note: an older cover for this ISBN can be found here.
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Recommended by Ryan Holiday, Stephane Grand, and 2 others.

Ryan HolidayA dark and moving first-person narrative, about the conflicting drives for self-preservation and self-immolation inside all of us. Hunger is about a writer who is starving himself. He cannot write because he is starving and cannot eat because writing is how he makes his living. It’s a vicious cycle and the book is a first-person descent into it. Strangely modern for being published in 1890 and... (Source)

Stephane GrandThis is an amazing book about being true to your engagements. (Source)

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43
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is Proust’s spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, charged with the narrator’s memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside. At the heart of the story lies his relationships with his grandmother and with the Swann family. As a meditation on different forms of love, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower has no equal. Here, Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions, from the magnificently dull M. de Norpois to the enchanting Robert de Saint-Loup. It is memorable as well for the first appearance of the two figures... more

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44

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats includes all of the poems authorized by Yeats for inclusion in his standard canon. Breathtaking in range, it encompasses the entire arc of his career, from luminous reworking of ancient Irish myths and legends, to passionate meditations on the demands and rewards of youth and old age, from exquisite, occasionally whimsical songs of love, nature, and art to somber and angry poems of life in a nation torn by war and uprising. In observing the development of rich and recurring images and themes over the course of his body of work, we can trace the quest... more

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45

Catch-22

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction; critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos; and much more.

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Now a Hulu limited series starring Christopher Abbott, George Clooney, Kyle Chandler, and Hugh Laurie.

Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the...
more

Mark BittmanI used to buy [this book] for a lot of people because I just thought if you hadn’t read it, you had to but maybe that era is over. (Source)

William BoydThe most wonderful novel ever written, because of its absurdist sense of humour and the way it looked at war. (Source)

William BoydThe most wonderful novel ever written, because of its absurdist sense of humour and the way it looked at war. (Source)

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46

All Quiet on the Western Front

One by one the boys begin to fall…

In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.
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Recommended by Cécile Fabre, and 1 others.

Cécile FabreHe knows that his pleasure at a beautiful landscape, at the smell of good food, will forever be coloured by what the landscape looked like in the trenches, by the food that was cooked in the trenches. (Source)

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47
Rediscover Antoine de Saint-Exupery's universal masterpiece with original text and magnificent new illustrations created by masters of film animation. This wise and enchanginting fable teaches the secret of what is really important in life. less

Ryan HolidayEqually allegorical, I read The Little Prince for the first time which for some reason I’d never been exposed to before. If you’re in the same boat, read it. It’s short but great. (Source)

Brandon Stanton[Brandon Stanton recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

Karen PaolilloThe Little Prince has influenced me in every aspect of my life, from my own emotions and how I feel inwardly, to how I like to view our planet. (Source)

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48

A Moveable Feast

Hemingway's memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the twenties are deeply personal, warmly affectionate, and full of wit. Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him - James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - he recalls the time when, poor, happy, and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation. Written during the last years of Hemingway's life, his memoir is a lively and powerful reflection of his genius that scintillates with the romance of the city. less

Mohsin HamidWe think of Hemingway as an American writer, but much of his writing is set outside of the United States, just as much of his life was set outside of the United States. (Source)

Janine di GiovanniThe fact that Hemingway writes it as an old, rather bitter man trapped in his Idaho home with a bullying wife while he dreams of his youth in Paris with his first wife and child is so touching to me. (Source)

Wai Chee DimockThis is a memoir by Hemingway about his time in Paris, which includes sketches of people like F Scott Fitzgerald. (Source)

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49

The Picture of Dorian Gray

On its first publication The Picture of Dorian Gray was regarded as dangerously modern in its depiction of fin-de-siècle decadence. In this updated version of the Faust story, the tempter is Lord Henry Wotton, who lives selfishly for amoral pleasure; Dorian's good angel is the portrait painter Basil Hallward, whom Dorian murders. The book highlights the tension between the polished surface of high society and the life of secret vice. Although sin is punished in the end the book has a flavour of the elegantly perverse.

With an Afterword by Peter Harness.

Designed...
more

Eric BerkowitzThe Picture of Dorian Gray is now a part of the canon that no one would admit to not having read. Most of us have read it and delighted in its witticisms. It’s hard to imagine, but when Dorian Gray was first published, the book was not well received at all. It was totally panned. It was held against him as being an example of an effete character. It was being serialised by Lippincott’s Magazine,... (Source)

Marc MontagneMy favorite fiction book is the The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I'm a huge Oscar Wilde fan, he has one of the brightest minds and the Picture is a masterpiece and his unique novel. I consider that you should only read books that you would consider reading again at some point while still enjoying the same pleasure. The Picture is definitely one of those. (Source)

Andra ZahariaA copy from 1903 of this book is my most prized possession. (Source)

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50

Light in August

Light in August, a novel that contrasts stark tragedy with hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, which features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, a lonely outcast haunted by visions of Confederate glory; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry. less

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51

Slaughterhouse-Five

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time, Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most. less

Carlos EireEven though he is no philosopher Vonnegut is still able to ask the questions that all of us think about – how time affects our lives. (Source)

Dan Christensen@MetaHumean Love that book. (Source)

Bernard TanI’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a... (Source)

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52

A Streetcar Named Desire

The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams’ essay “The World I Live In.”

It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law,...
more

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53

Journey to the End of the Night

Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly... more

Neil Strauss[Neil Strauss recommended this book in the book "Tools of Titans".] (Source)

Rachel KushnerThis novel taught me, early on, about hyperbole … I took it as a lesson and challenge, about description, accuracy, truth, and the powers of exaggeration to produce humour. (Source)

David DownieI was particularly fascinated by Céline’s portrait of the city because Paris is one of the characters in the book. You get a real sense of what Paris looked like. (Source)

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54

Absalom, Absalom!

Published in 1936, Absalom, Absalom! is considered by many to be William Faulkner's masterpiece. Although the novel's complex and fragmented structure poses considerable difficulty to readers, the book's literary merits place it squarely in the ranks of America's finest novels. The story concerns Thomas Sutpen, a poor man who finds wealth and then marries into a respectable family. His ambition and extreme need for control bring about his ruin and the ruin of his family. Sutpen's story is told by several narrators, allowing the reader to observe variations in the saga as it is recounted by... more

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55

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity.

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is...
more

Bryony GordonAs a teenage girl, you have to read The Bell Jar. It’s a rite of passage. (Source)

The CEO Library Community (through anonymous form)One of the best 3 books I've read in 2019 (Source)

Tim KendallDespite its subject matter, The Bell Jar is often a very funny novel. Perhaps we miss it because the pall of Plath’s biography descends across the whole work and reputation. But The Bell Jar is viciously funny. There are people still alive today who won’t talk about it because they were so badly hurt by Plath’s portrayal of them. (Source)

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56
THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society.

The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world...
more

Barack ObamaAs 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)

Jacqueline NovogratzThe first book I read by an African author. Achebe is unflinching in his portrayal of the challenges of change, the relationships of colonialism, and power/powerlessness. (Source)

Sam KileyI think what’s so fantastic about it is that it’s sort of portentous, if that’s the right word, in that it captures that moment between the end of colonisation and independence, and the inevitable crushing of Africa’s dreams. I can’t remember exactly when it was written, but it was very early on in the process. It sounds really pessimistic – I mean, it’s a beautifully written book, but it’s the... (Source)

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57

The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3)

After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes of In Search of Lost Time, The Guermantes Way opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to, and a devastating satire of a time, place, and culture, The Guermantes Way defines the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world. This elegantly packaged new translation will introduce a new generation of American... more

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58

Sodom and Gomorrah (In Search of Lost Time, #4)

Sodom and Gomorrah – now in a superb translation by John Sturrock – takes up the theme of homosexual love, male and female, and dwells on how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it. Proust's novel is also an unforgiving analysis of both the decadent high society of Paris, and the rise of a philistine bourgeoisie that is on the way to supplanting it. Characters who had lesser roles in earlier volumes now reappear in a different light and take center stage, notably Albertine, with whom the narrator believes he is in love, and also the insanely haughty Baron de Charlus. less

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59

Howards End

Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life. Howards End is considered by some to be Forster's masterpiece. less
Recommended by Tracy Chevalier, and 1 others.

Tracy ChevalierMrs Wilcox tells Margaret Schlegel of a superstition about the wych-elm which grows by her family home, Howards End. (Source)

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60

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots. less
Recommended by Farah Jasmine Griffin, and 1 others.

Farah Jasmine GriffinHurston gives us one of the first true love stories in African American writing. (Source)

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61

Nightwood

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (TLS). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous. The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American... more

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62

A Passage to India

When Adela Quested and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced 'Anglo-Indian' community. Determined to escape the parochial English enclave and explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves with Aziz, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the centre of a scandal that rouses violent passions among both the British and their Indian subjects. A... more
Recommended by Ian Buruma, and 1 others.

Ian BurumaOne of the novel’s strengths is that it’s not polemical. It’s very clear that Forster disapproved of colonial rule, but he doesn’t paint a caricature of brutal Brits and Indian victims. It’s much more subtle than that. The character of Cyril Fielding, the young Englishman full of goodwill, is true to life in that a lot of British people in India at the time did a lot of good – but in the end it... (Source)

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63

Moby-Dick

Journey to the heart of the sea with this larger-than-life classic.

Regarded as a Great American Novel, "Moby Dick" is the ultimate tale of seeking vengeance.

Narrated by the crew member Ishmael, this epic whaling adventure follows the crew of the "Pequod," as its captain, Ahab, descends deeper and deeper into madness on his quest to find and kill the white whale that maimed him. Beyond the surface--of ship life, whaling, and the hunt for the elusive Moby Dick--are allegorical references to life--and even the universe--in this masterpiece by Herman Melville.
more

Steve JobsJobs told me that "Moby-Dick" was among his favorite books and he reread it a lot when he was a teen. (Source)

Barack ObamaAccording to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, this title is among his most influential forever favorites. (Source)

Rebecca GoldsteinI actually have quite an idiosyncratic reading of this great metaphysical masterpiece. (Source)

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64

The plague

A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes a omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion. less

Jenny DavidsonAlbert Camus’s The Plague probably remains the best-known novel on the topic of epidemic disease. It tells the story of those involved in an epidemic in a North African setting. It is very interested in the details about how quarantines are enforced and the role not just of the government, but of individuals who band together into groups to manage the epidemic. (Source)

Stephen BreyerHe talks about the plague. Well, the plague is that part of a human being which can be very evil. That germ, he says at the end, never dies, it simply goes into remission. It lurks. It lurks in the cupboards, it lurks in the hallways, it lurks in the filing cabinets. (Source)

Arthur AmmannIt’s an amazing book, considering Camus probably never personally experienced a plague. In his novel, Camus captured everything that we were dealing with in the Aids epidemic without Aids existing at that time. Without his knowing what the consequences of the HIV plague were going to be, he seems to have gotten all the actors in there and the myriad of things that you wrestle with. (Source)

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65

Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (The Trilogy, #1-3)

The first novel of Samuel Beckett's mordant and exhilirating midcentury trilogy intoduces us to Molloy, who has been mysteriously incarcerated, and who subsequently escapes to go discover the whereabouts of his mother. In the latter part of this curious masterwork, a certain Jacques Moran is deputized by anonymous authorities to search for the aforementioned Molloy. In the trilogy's second novel, Malone, who might or might not be Molloy himself, addresses us with his ruminations while in the act of dying. The third novel consists of the fragmented monologue - delivered, like the monologues of... more

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66

Nella Larsen’s distinctive and revealing novel about racial identity set in New York in 1929. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga and Alexander Skarsgård.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition of Passing features an introduction by writer and academic, Christa Holm Vogelius.

Irene Redfield, married to a successful physician, enjoys a...

more
Recommended by Benjamin Dreyer, and 1 others.

Benjamin Dreyer@mdbell79 I'm happy to report that we've done our best to keep this book in readers' hands for nearly two decades. https://t.co/zpisFYUGOl (Source)

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67

Four Quartets

The Four Quartets is a series of four poems by T.S. Eliot, published individually from 1936 to 1942, and in book form in 1943; it was considered by Eliot himself to be his finest work. Each of the quartets has five "movements" and each is titled by a place name -- BURNT NORTON (1936), EAST COKER (1940), THE DRY SALVAGES (1941), and LITTLE GIDDING (1942). Eliot's insights into the cyclical nature of life are revealed through themes and images woven throughout the four poems. Spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references... more

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68

Death of a Salesman

In the spring of 1948 Arthur Miller retreated to a log cabin in Connecticut with the first two lines of a new play already fixed in his mind. He emerged six weeks later with the final script of Death of a Salesman - a painful examination of American life and consumerism. Opening on Broadway the following year, Miller's extraordinary masterpiece changed the course of modern theatre. In creating Willy Loman, his destructively insecure anti-hero, Miller himself defined his aim as being 'to set forth what happens when a man does not have a grip on the forces of life'. less
Recommended by Daniel Pink, Tim Lott, and 3 others.

Tim LottDeath of a Salesman is more about the relationship between fathers and sons than brothers, but the motif of maimed brother relationships runs in all directions. (Source)

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69

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

T. S. Eliot's playful cat poems have delighted readers and cat lovers around the world ever since they were first published in 1939. They were originally composed for his godchildren, with Eliot posing as Old Possum himself, and later inspired the legendary musical Cats. less
Recommended by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Heidi N. Moore, and 2 others.

Andrew Lloyd Webber39 years ago Andrew came across a book which became the foundation for one of the most celebrated musical productions in history! In just shy of 11 days that creation will be hitting the big screens for you all of you to enjoy. - Team ALW https://t.co/B282r7tVMi (Source)

Heidi N. MooreThis list of heart emoji, in order to be a true found poem, must be read with the same spirit and intonation as Sir John Gielgud and Irene Worth voicing TS Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats https://t.co/P95pwSJMd2 (Source)

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70

The Good Soldier

Recommended by Alexandra Harris, and 1 others.

Alexandra HarrisIt really is a sad story, about four people – two couples – who are at a German spa resort, in love with the wrong people. (Source)

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71

Finnegans Wake

A story with no real beginning or end (it ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence), this "book of Doublends Jined" is as remarkable for its prose as for its circular structure.

Written in a fantastic dream-language, forged from polyglot puns and portmanteau words, the Wake features some of Joyce's most hilarious characters: the Irish barkeep Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Shem the Penman, Shaun the Postman, and Anna Livia Plurabelle.

Joyce's final work, Finnegan's Wake is his masterpiece of the night as Ulysses is of the day....
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72

Jacob's Room

This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works. less
Recommended by Mona Simpson, Alexandra Harris, and 2 others.

Mona SimpsonWhat would female fiction be without Virginia Woolf? She picks out exactly the right details to reveal the character’s interiorities. (Source)

Alexandra HarrisIt’s a very ghostly book in that we have a very likable hero and want to get to know him a lot, but he keeps disappearing. (Source)

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73

Selected Poems

Chosen by Eliot himself, the poems in this volume represent the poet’s most important work before Four Quartets. Included here is some of the most celebrated verse in modern literature-”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Gerontion,” “The Waste Land,” “The Hollow Men,” and “Ash Wednesday”-as well as many other fine selections from Eliot’s early work.
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74

Winesburg, Ohio

A modern American classic, Winesburg, Ohio mixed Sherwood Anderson's memories of his boyhood in Clyde, Ohio, and his observations in turn-of-the-century Chicago, where he wrote advertising copy. It was a book that, for its time, broke all conventions. Its introduction and twenty-one loosely connected stories defied the genteel tradition that omitted anything sexual, harsh, or abberant from print. It embraced frankness and truth and dealt with people whose deeply moving lives were filled with secrets. Here are the inhabitants of small-town America: young George Willard, the newspaper... more
Recommended by Simon Winchester, and 1 others.

Simon WinchesterIt was very modern and groundbreaking for its time, an entirely new form of writing. He draws about 20 portraits of people who lived in this mythical town. (Source)

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75

Civilization and Its Discontents

It stands as a brilliant summary of the views on culture from a psychoanalytic perspective that he had been developing since the turn of the century. It is both witness and tribute to the late theory of mind—the so-called structural theory, with its stress on aggression, indeed the death drive, as the pitiless adversary of eros.

Civilization and Its Discontents is one of the last of Freud's books, written in the decade before his death and first published in German in 1929. In it he states his views on the broad question of man's place in the world, a place Freud defines...
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John GrayCivilisation, as Freud understands it, begins with the restraint of violence… which means that the civilisational condition is one of discontent. (Source)

Sam FreedmanA rough synopsis of the book is that love is a social construct designed to prevent us from murdering each other, at the expense of creating profound neurosis, so definitely a bold choice for a second date. https://t.co/pEnlgR6aiL (Source)

David BellA dispassionate view of the cost of civilisation to the individual. (Source)

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76

The Magic Mountain

Hans Castorp is 'a perfectly ordinary, if engaging young man' when he goes to visit his cousin in an exclusive sanatorium in the Swiss Alps.What should have been a three week trip turns into a seven year stay. Hans falls in love and becomes intoxicated with the ideas he hears at the clinic - ideas which will strain and crack apart in a world on the verge of the First World War. less
Recommended by Igor Debatur, Marc Wittmann, and 2 others.

Igor DebaturIt’s a story about young ambitious man who felt in a trap of his own mind in form of a chronic disease. He visited his brother in a clinic, situated in high mountains of Switzerland. Instead of retreating after a week, as was originally planned, he stayed there for seven years. There are several very bright characters with different ideas about liberalism, conservatism, hedonism and many other... (Source)

Marc WittmannIn the ever-repeating sameness of the Magic Mountain Resort, time accelerates because all novelty is lost. (Source)

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77

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lawrence's frank portrayal of an extramarital affair and the explicit sexual explorations of it's central characters caused this controversial book, now considered a masterpiece, to be banned as pornography until 1960. less
Recommended by Anthony Julius, and 1 others.

Anthony JuliusOf course, this book was also the object of censoring attention, culminating in a couple of trials (one in the States and one in Britain). But it’s also itself about the violation of norms – in this case, the violation of the marriage contract and the norm of monogamous living. (Source)

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78

The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Parallel German text and English translation.

The influence and popularity of Rilke’s poetry in America have never been greater than they are today, more than fifty years after his death. Rilke is unquestionably the most significant and compelling poet of romantic transformation, of spiritual quest, that the twentieth century has known. His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert a seemingly endless fascination for contemporary readers.

In Stephen Mitchell’s versions, many readers feel that they have discovered an English rendering that captures the lyric...
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79

The Complete Stories

The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death. With the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka’s narrative work is included in this volume.
--penguinrandomhouse.com

Two Introductory parables: Before the law --
Imperial message --
Longer stories: Description of a struggle --
Wedding preparations in the country --
Judgment --
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80

Between the Acts

In Woolf's last novel, the action takes place on one summer's day in 1939 at Pointz Hall, a country house in the heart of England, where the villagers are presenting their annual pageant.

The book weaves together the musings of several disparate characters and their reactions to the imminence of a war which is to change the pattern of history.
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Recommended by Margo Jefferson, and 1 others.

Margo JeffersonThere’s almost a touch of the allegorical. When I was re-reading it, I realised the characters are interesting, they’re poignant, they’re touching, but it’s about the larger purpose that they serve. Woolf’s language keeps moving us that way. (Source)

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Don't have time to read the top Modernist books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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81
Death in Venice is a story of obsession. Gustave von Aschenbach is a successful but aging writer who travels to Venice for a holiday. One day, at dinner, Aschenbach notices an exceptionally beautiful young boy who is staying with his family in the same hotel. Soon his days begin to revolve around seeing this boy and he is too distracted to pay attention to the ominous rumors that have begun to circulate about disease spreading through the city. Available exclusively from Vintage Classics.
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Recommended by Rebecca Goldstein, and 1 others.

Rebecca GoldsteinI’m really interested in novels that are deeply Platonic, and Death in Venice is deeply Platonic. (Source)

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82

A Clockwork Orange

In Anthony Burgess’s influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends’ intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess’s introduction, “A Clockwork Orange Resucked.” less

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83

Les Fleurs du Mal

Presents the first American translation of the complete text of Baudelaire's 1857 masterwork and includes the complete original French texts for easy comparison. less

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84

Tender Buttons

The Corrected Centennial Edition

The MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions has awarded Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition its seal designating it an MLA Approved Edition.
2014 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the original publication of Gertrude Stein's groundbreaking modernist classic, Tender Buttons. This centennial edition is the first and only version to incorporate Stein's own handwritten corrections—found in a first-edition copy at the University of Colorado—as well as corrections discovered among her papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Editor Seth Perlow has...
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Recommended by Jeremy Noel-Tod, and 1 others.

Jeremy Noel-TodTender Buttons in particular was the book that made her notorious. She knew that there was something about her writing that fascinated people, and it fascinated them partially because it irritated them. But it irritated them because they were sort of attracted to it, without knowing why. It irritates the rational part of the mind which expects to be able to explain things. (Source)

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85

A Doll's House

A Doll's House (1879), is a masterpiece of theatrical craft which, for the first time portrayed the tragic hypocrisy of Victorian middle class marriage on the stage. The play ushered in a new social era and "exploded like a bomb into contemporary life". 

The Student Edition contains these exclusive features:

·         A chronology of the playwright's life and work

·         An introduction giving the background of the play

·         Commentary on themes, characters. language and style

·         Notes on individual words...

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86

The Man Without Qualities

Set in Vienna on the eve of World War I, this great novel of ideas tells the story of Ulrich, ex-soldier and scientist, seducer and skeptic, who finds himself drafted into the grandiose plans for the 70th jubilee of the Emperor Franz Josef. This new translation - published in two elegant volumes - is the first to present Musil's complete text, including material that remained unpublished during his lifetime. less

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87

The Awakening

When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the confines of her domestic situation.

Aside from its unusually frank treatment of a then-controversial subject, the novel is widely admired today for its literary qualities. Edmund Wilson characterized it as a work "quite uninhibited and beautifully...
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88

The Collected Poems

This definitive poetry collection, originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens on his 75th birthday, contains:

- "Harmonium"
- "Ideas of Order"
- "The Man With the Blue Guitar"
- "Parts of the World"
- "Transport Summer"
- "The Auroras of Autumn"
- "The Rock"
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Recommended by Caterina Fake, Edmund de Waal, and 2 others.

Edmund de WaalIf I had to pick a book of poems for my desert island, I would probably end up with Wallace Stevens. (Source)

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89

The Castle

Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman

Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power, previously unknown to English language readers.
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Recommended by Igor Debatur, and 1 others.

Igor DebaturQuestion: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche The Castle by Franz Kafka 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Source)

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90
In this absorbing interview, Bishop Athanasius Schneider offers a candid, incisive examination of controversies raging in the Church and the most pressing issues of our times, providing clarity and hope for beleaguered Catholics. He addresses such topics as widespread doctrinal confusion, the limits of papal authority, the documents of Vatican II, the Society of St. Pius X, anti-Christian ideologies and political threats, the third secret of Fatima, the traditional Roman rite, and the Amazon Synod, among many others. Like his fourth-century patron, St. Athanasius the Great, Bishop Schneider... more

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91
This volume brings together three of T. S. Eliot's powerful collections into one. It includes such classic poems as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Portrait of a Lady," "Preludes," "Gerontion," "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," and "The Waste Land." less

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92

Lord Jim

Jim, a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. When the ship starts rapidly taking on water and disaster seems imminent, Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed. The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry, leaving Jim to the court alone. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel... more

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93

The Crucible

"I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history," Arthur Miller wrote of his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders... more
Recommended by Claire Fox, and 1 others.

Claire FoxThis is the Salem witch hunt in the context of the McCarthy era. The reason I chose it is because I feel that we ourselves, in the contemporary period, are in danger of having our own heresy-calling and witch hunts. It is very popular to say this book proves what it is like when hysterical religions name people as witches, and how intolerant religion is. But I think we can see it in a much more... (Source)

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94

On the Road

When Jack Kerouac’s On the Road first appeared in 1957, readers instantly felt the beat of a new literary rhythm. A fictionalised account of his own journeys across America with his friend Neal Cassady, Kerouac’s beatnik odyssey captured the soul of a generation and changed the landscape of American fiction for ever.

Influenced by Jack London and Thomas Wolfe, Kerouac always wanted to be a writer, but his true voice only emerged when he wrote about his own experiences in On the Road. Leaving a broken marriage behind him, Sal Paradise (Kerouac) joins Dean Moriarty (Cassady), a...
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Recommended by Ev Williams, Bogdan Iordache, and 2 others.

Bogdan IordacheMy favourite book is "On the road" by Jack Kerouac. Apart from being probably one of the best well written books in the world, I appreciate Kerouac's philosophy to dedicate himself entirely to what was important to him, something that I have applied in my life as much as possible. I've simplified my life in many ways, and stay focused on what I think it's really important. For Jack it was the... (Source)

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95

The House of Mirth

A literary sensation when it was published by Scribners in 1905, The House of Mirth quickly established Edith Wharton as the most important American woman of letters in the twentieth century. The first American novel to provide a devastatingly accurate portrait of New York's aristocracy, it is the story of the beautiful and beguiling Lily Bart and her ill-fated attempt to rise to the heights of a heartless society in which, ultimately, she has no part. less
Recommended by Chelsea Handler, Jay McInerney, and 2 others.

Chelsea HandlerA timeless story we have seen play out for hundreds of years — yet, it feels like it would only apply to modern day society in the form of a Kardashian. (Source)

Jay McInerneyAmericans are always fascinated with the wealthy. It’s a bit of an illusion to imagine ours to be a classless society, as novelists like Wharton made brilliantly clear. (Source)

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96
Oscar Wilde's madcap farce about mistaken identities, secret engagements, and lovers entanglements still delights readers more than a century after its 1895 publication and premiere performance. The rapid-fire wit and eccentric characters of The Importance of Being Earnest have made it a mainstay of the high school curriculum for decades.

Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gwendolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country...
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97
The second of three volumes charting the history of the modernist magazine in Britain, North America, and Europe, this collection offers the first comprehensive study of the wide and varied range of "little magazines" which were so instrumental in introducing the new writing and ideas that came to constitute literary and cultural modernism.
This book contains 44 original essays on the role of periodicals in the United States and Canada. Over 120 magazines are discussed by expert contributors, completely reshaping our understanding of the construction and emergence of modernism. The...
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98

Zeno's Conscience

This enormously engaging, strange novel is both an engrossing saga of a family and a hilarious account of addiction and failure as its helpless hero, notionally undergoing psychiatric help, manages spectacularly to fail to give up smoking, run his business or make sense of his private life.

A hymn to self-delusion and procrastination ZENO'S CONSCIENCE has provoked enormous affection in its readers both in Italian and English since its first publication in the 1920s.
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Recommended by Tim Parks, and 1 others.

Tim ParksLet’s make a quick comment about Svevo. Svevo was not his real name. His real name was Schmitz and he grew up as a German speaker in the area of Trieste where there was a big linguistic mix, so Italian was his second language. He had written a number of books which he self-published, which was quite common at that time, and received no attention at all really, so he was a failure in that regard.... (Source)

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99

The Rainbow

Set in the rural Midlands of England, The Rainbow (1915) revolves around three generations of the Brangwens, a strong, vigorous family, deeply involved with the land. When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow,Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter Anna as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupts between them. All are seeking individual fulfilment, but it is Ursula, Anna's spirited daughter, who, in search for self-knowledge, rejects the conventional role of womanhood. less
Recommended by Rosamund McDougall, and 1 others.

Rosamund McDougallD H Lawrences gives us we the rawness of nature and the complete interdependence of humans with the land. (Source)

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100
The Non-Dairy Evolution Vegan Cheese Cookbook is a follow-up to The Non-Dairy Formulary and offers new and improved plant-based, dairy-free recipes to delight your palate. Detailed step-by step instructions are provided for creating non-dairy butter, milks and creams using a variety of plant-based ingredient options; cultured butter; cultured raw buttermilk; cultured cashew-based creams; Greek-style yogurt and sharp, tangy cultured cheeses such as chevre, cream cheese, bleu cheese and extra-sharp cheddar cheese; "instant" soymilk or almond milk-based cheeses that shred and melt, such as Brie,... more

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Don't have time to read the top Modernist books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.