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The Hour of the Star
by Clarice Lispector
A poor Brazilian girl's life story, illustrating the struggles of the working class.
The novel starts with the narrator, Rodrigo S.M., discussing what it means to write a story. He addresses the reader directly and spends a lot of time talking about his philosophical beliefs. After ... (Wikipedia)
Cronopios and Famas
by Julio Cortázar
A surrealist collection of short stories, exploring the absurdities of the world.
"The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions ... (Goodreads)
Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
An aging knight's adventures and misadventures, filled with chivalry, honor, and satire.
Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in ... (Goodreads)
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings
by Jorge Luis Borges
A collection of metaphysical tales and philosophical musings exploring the nature of reality.
Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in ... (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)
Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino
A fantastical exploration of the cities of the imagination and the possibilities of life.
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young ... (Goodreads)
The Savage Detectives
by Roberto Bolaño
A poetic journey of two young poets searching for a mysterious figure through Latin America.
The novel is narrated in first person by several narrators and divided into three parts. The first section , "Mexicans Lost in Mexico", set in late 1975, is told by 17-year-old aspiring poet, Juan ... (Wikipedia)
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
by Sappho
Poetic exploration of love and desire, reflecting on the beauty of life and nature.
By combining the ancient mysteries of Sappho with the contemporary wizardry of one of our most fearless and original poets, If Not, Winter provides a tantalizing window onto the genius of a woman ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Waves
by Virginia Woolf
Inner musings of six characters in search of individual identity, expressed through the ebb and flow of the sea.
The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. Woolf is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together. Bernard ... (Wikipedia)
The Aleph and Other Stories
by Jorge Luis Borges
A collection of stories featuring metaphysical and philosophical explorations of the human condition.
Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an ... (Goodreads)
Howl and Other Poems
by Allen Ginsberg
A collection of poems exploring themes of individualism and modern culture.
Dubliners
by James Joyce
Collection of stories about everyday life in Dublin, exploring the Irish psyche.
This work of art reflects life in Ireland at the turn of the last century, and by rejecting euphemism, reveals to the Irish their unromantic realities. Each of the 15 stories offers glimpses into the ... (Goodreads)
Pedro Páramo
by Juan Rulfo
A man returns to his hometown in search of his father, discovering the ghostly inhabitants.
A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village. As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another ... (Goodreads)
Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
A woman's journey of self-discovery in the Caribbean, her story of emancipation from the shadows of colonialism.
The novel, initially set in Jamaica, opens a short while after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ended slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834. , The protagonist Antoinette relates the story of ... (Wikipedia)
Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
A day in the life of a high-society woman, delving into her inner thoughts and feelings.
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about ... (Wikipedia)
Fever Dream
by Samanta Schweblin
A woman's surreal, unsettling journey into the depths of her subconscious.
Waking up disoriented in a clinic, Amanda begins a conversation with a young boy named David. He urges Amanda to try to remember what happened before she came to the clinic. Through the constant ... (Wikipedia)
Blindness
by José Saramago
A society is plunged into chaos when everyone suddenly loses their sight.
Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortune of a ... (Wikipedia)
Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Surrealist exploration of addiction, delusions, and reality.
Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. The book begins with the ... (Wikipedia)
Laughable Loves
by Milan Kundera
Collection of interconnected stories exploring the complexities of love, relationships and life.
Laughable Loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968, but was then was subsequently banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or rather with the ... (Goodreads)
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
Exploration of the complexities of human relationships and family life.
The novel is set in the Ramsays' summer home in the Hebrides , on the Isle of Skye . The section begins with Mrs Ramsay assuring her son James that they should be able to visit the lighthouse on the ... (Wikipedia)
Ficciones
by Jorge Luis Borges
A collection of short stories exploring the limits of the imagination.
The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his ... (Goodreads)
The Invention of Morel
by Adolfo Bioy Casares
An escaped convict finds refuge on a deserted island, where he discovers a strange and mysterious phenomenon.
The fugitive starts a diary after tourists arrive on the desert island where he is hiding. , Although he considers their presence a miracle, he is afraid they will turn him in to the authorities. He ... (Wikipedia)
Steppenwolf
by Hermann Hesse
The inner struggles of a tortured soul as he searches for redemption.
The book is presented as a manuscript written by its protagonist , a middle-aged man named Harry Haller, who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. The acquaintance adds a ... (Wikipedia)
Life is Elsewhere
by Milan Kundera
A young poet's journey through life, love, and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.
Kundera initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age . The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly ... (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 Golden Notebook
by Doris Lessing
A woman's journey of self-discovery and reflection, exploring freedom, identity and relationships.
The Golden Notebook is the story of writer Anna Wulf, the four notebooks in which she records her life, and her attempt to tie them together in a fifth, gold-coloured notebook. The book intersperses ... (Wikipedia)
Chess Story
by Stefan Zweig
A chess master's attempt to regain his lost skill, and the psychological battle he faces.
The narrator opens the story on a passenger liner traveling from New York to Buenos Aires. Driven to mental anguish as the result of total isolation by the Nazis , Dr B, a securities expert hiding ... (Wikipedia)
The Glass Bead Game
by Hermann Hesse
In a future society, an elite group of intellectuals play a complex game that combines music, mathematics, and philosophy.
The beginning of the novel introduces the Music Master, the resident of Castalia who recruits Knecht as a young student and who is to have the most long-lasting and profound effect on Knecht ... (Wikipedia)
The Price of Salt
by Patricia Highsmith
Two women build a relationship against all odds, navigating a taboo romance.
Therese Belivet is a lonely young woman, just beginning her adult life in Manhattan and looking for her chance to launch her career as a theatre set designer . When she was a small girl, her widowed ... (Wikipedia)
100 Love Sonnets
by Pablo Neruda
Collection of love poems exploring the depths of passion, desire and longing.
Against the backdrop of Isla Negra - the sea and wind, the white sand with its scattering of delicate wild flowers, the hot sun and salty smells of the Pacific - the poet sets the poems in ... (Goodreads)
