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Recommendations based on Endgameby Samuel Beckett
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Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
Two men wait for a mysterious figure who never arrives, reflecting on their lives and existence.
Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, have met near a leafless tree. Estragon spent the previous night lying in a ditch and receiving a beating from some unnamed assailants. The two men discuss a variety ... (Wikipedia)
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.
The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)
Ulysses
by James Joyce
Epic narrative following a day in the life of an Irishman living in Dublin.
It is 8 a.m. Buck Mulligan , a boisterous medical student, calls Stephen Dedalus (a young writer encountered as the principal subject of, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ) up to the roof of ... (Wikipedia)
The Castle
by Franz Kafka
Townspeople's surreal struggle against a mysterious ruling power.
The protagonist, K., arrives in a village governed by a mysterious bureaucracy operating in a nearby castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he claims to be a land surveyor summoned by the ... (Wikipedia)
King Lear
by William Shakespeare
An aging king's descent into madness reveals the consequences of pride and vanity.
Shakespeare’s King Lear challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the ... (Goodreads)
The Waste Land
by T.S. Eliot
A modernist poem exploring the social and psychological fragmentation of modern society.
The Waste Land, first published in 1922, is often regarded as T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, as well as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. The ... (Goodreads)
As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner
A family's struggle to fulfill the dying wish of their mother, amidst personal and societal challenges.
The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish ... (Wikipedia)
Paradise Lost
by John Milton
Epic poem of the Fall of Man, exploring the depths of human nature and the consequences of sin.
John Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of ... (Goodreads)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
An exploration of a young man's struggle to find his identity and place in the world.
The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an ... (Goodreads)
The Book of Disquiet
by Fernando Pessoa
A collection of philosophical reflections on life, love and fate.
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 ... (Goodreads)
Amerika
by Franz Kafka
A young man's surreal journey through a bizarre and dystopian version of America.
The story describes the bizarre wanderings of sixteen-year-old European immigrant Karl Roßmann, who was forced to go to New York City to escape the scandal of his seduction by a housemaid. As the ... (Wikipedia)
The Fall
by Albert Camus
A man's journey into alienation and despair, driven by a sense of absurdity in life.
The Fall, ( French :, La Chute, ) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus . First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. Set in Amsterdam , The Fall consists of a series of ... (Wikipedia)
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
Tragic story of the decline of a southern family, exploring the human condition.
The first section of the novel is narrated by Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a source of shame to the family due to his diminished mental capacity; the only characters who show genuine care for him are ... (Wikipedia)
Uncle Vanya
by Anton Chekhov
A study of the ennui and monotony of rural life, with characters struggling with their place in the world.
A garden in Professor Serebryakov's country estate. Astrov and Marina discuss how old Astrov has grown, and his boredom with his life as a country doctor. Vanya enters, and complains of the ... (Wikipedia)
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
A journey into the depths of the human psyche, exploring the darkness of colonialism.
Aboard the Nellie , anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend , Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow ... (Wikipedia)
Endgame & Act Without Words
by Samuel Beckett
Two plays exploring the human condition through absurdist and existentialist lenses, showcasing the futility and meaninglessness of life.
Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature n 1969; his literary output of plays, novels, stories and poetry has earned him an uncontested place as one of the greatest writers of our ... (Goodreads)
Mother Courage and Her Children
by Bertolt Brecht
A play exploring the impact of war and its aftermath on a woman and her children.
Widely considered one of the great dramatic creations of the modern stage, "Mother Courage and Her Children" is Bertolt Brecht's most passionate and profound statement against war. Set in the ... (Goodreads)
The Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann
A young man's journey of self-exploration and personal growth during a long stay at a Swiss sanatorium.
The narrative opens in the decade before World War I . It introduces the protagonist, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family. Following the early death of his parents, Castorp has ... (Wikipedia)
The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon
A surreal journey of uncovering the truth of a mysterious organization.
In the mid-1960s, Oedipa Maas lives a fairly comfortable life in the (fictional) northern Californian village of Kinneret, despite her lackluster marriage with Mucho Maas, a rudderless radio jockey , ... (Wikipedia)
The Plague
by Albert Camus
A small town in Algeria is struck by a deadly plague, testing the courage and faith of its citizens.
The book begins with an epigraph quoting Daniel Defoe , author of, A Journal of the Plague Year, . In the town of Oran, thousands of rats, initially unnoticed by the populace, begin to die in the ... (Wikipedia)
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
A grand narrative of life in a small English town, exploring the lives of its inhabitants.
Middlemarch centres on the lives of residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards – the years up to the 1832 Reform Act . The narrative is variably considered to consist of ... (Wikipedia)
The Clown
by Heinrich Böll
A young man's reflective journey through post-war Germany, exploring the consequences of war.
Hans Schnier is the "Clown" of the novel's title. He is twenty-seven years old from a very wealthy family. At the beginning of the story he arrives in Bonn, Germany. As a clown, he had to travel ... (Wikipedia)
Shakespeare's Sonnets
by William Shakespeare
A collection of poems exploring love, life, mortality, and beauty.
The Arden Shakespeare has long been acclaimed as the established scholarly edition of Shakespeare's work. Now being totally reedited for the third time, Arden editions offer the very best in ... (Goodreads)
The Three Sisters
by Anton Chekhov
Three sisters longing for a life beyond their small provincial town, exploring themes of family and love.
First performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901, The Three Sisters probes the lives and dreams of Olga, Masha, and Irina, former Muscovites now living in a provincial town from which they long to ... (Goodreads)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
by Tom Stoppard
A humorous exploration of fate and free will, seen through the eyes of two minor characters in Shakespeare's "Hamlet".
Hamlet told from the worm's-eye view of two minor characters, bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, reality and illusion mix, and where fate leads heroes to a ... (Goodreads)
Collected Fictions
by Jorge Luis Borges
An anthology of Borges' masterful short stories, exploring the depths of human thought and imagination.
Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, ... (Goodreads)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)
Oedipus Rex
by Sophocles
Tragic tale of a man's inescapable destiny and the consequences of his actions.
Oedipus, King of Thebes, sends his brother-in-law, Creon, to ask advice of the oracle at Delphi , concerning a plague ravaging Thebes. Creon returns to report that the plague is the result of ... (Wikipedia)
Demons
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A fictional exploration of the human condition, examining the darker sides of our nature.
The novel is in three parts. There are two epigraphs, the first from Pushkin's poem "Demons" and the second from Luke 8:32–36. After an almost illustrious but prematurely curtailed academic career ... (Wikipedia)
