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Recommendations based on Closely Watched Trainsby Bohumil Hrabal
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Too Loud a Solitude
by Bohumil Hrabal
A man's reflections on life and literature, as he crushes books for a living.
The entire story is narrated in the first person by the main character Hanta. Hanta is portrayed as a sort of recluse and hermit, albeit one with encyclopedic literary knowledge. Hanta uses ... (Wikipedia)
War with the Newts
by Karel Čapek
The story of a colony of intelligent newts, who are exploited and ultimately fight for their independence.
Only the last four of the book's 27 chapters deal with the eponymous war. The rest of the book is concerned with the discovery of the Newts, their exploitation and evolution, and growing tensions ... (Wikipedia)
The Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens
Witty comedy of misadventures of a group of travelers in 19th century England.
Few first novels have created as much popular excitement as The Pickwick Papers –-a comic masterpiece that catapulted its 24-year-old author to immediate fame. Readers were captivated by the ... (Goodreads)
Hopscotch
by Julio Cortázar
A surrealist journey of self-exploration and imaginative play.
Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club." A child's death and La ... (Goodreads)
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)
The Violent Bear It Away
by Flannery O'Connor
Exploration of religious faith and fanaticism in the American South.
Mason Tarwater, an outspoken evangelist and self-ordained prophet, dies many years after kidnapping his great-nephew Francis, raising him in a backwoods cabin and preparing him to someday take his ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Foucault's Pendulum
by Umberto Eco
A humorous and wild historical conspiracy thriller set across Europe.
A man named Casaubon , is hiding in the Musée des Arts et Métiers after closing. He believes that a secret society has kidnapped his friend Jacopo Belbo and are now after him, and will meet in the ... (Wikipedia)
The Good Soldier Švejk
by Jaroslav Hašek
A Czech soldier's satirical adventures during WWI, highlighting the absurdity of war.
The story begins in Prague with news of the assassination in Sarajevo that precipitates World War I . Švejk displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no ... (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)
The Joke
by Milan Kundera
A reflection on the nature of humor, and the consequences of a single joke.
The novel is composed of many jokes, which have strong effects on the characters. The story is told from the four viewpoints of Ludvik Jahn, Helena Zemánková, Kostka, and Jaroslav. Jaroslav's joke is ... (Wikipedia)
Foreign Affairs
by Alison Lurie
Two American professors find love and self-discovery while on sabbatical in England.
Unmarried fifty-four-year-old Virginia Miner (Vinnie), a professor at Corinth University who specializes in children's literature, is off to London for another research trip. She loves England and ... (Wikipedia)
The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A man's struggle to find his place in society, and the moral dilemmas he faces.
Prince Myshkin, a young man in his mid-twenties and a descendant of one of the oldest Russian lines of nobility, is on a train to Saint Petersburg on a cold November morning. He is returning to ... (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)
Stoner
by John Williams
An academic's life of quiet desperation, finding solace in literature.
William Stoner is born on a small farm in 1891. After high school, the county agent advises he go to agriculture school. Stoner enrolls in the University of Missouri , where all agriculture students ... (Wikipedia)
Light in August
by William Faulkner
A story of redemption and hope set in the Jim Crow South.
The novel is set in the American South in the 1930s, during the time of Prohibition and Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation in the South. It begins with the journey of Lena Grove, a young ... (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 Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
Detective Sam Spade must solve a mysterious case involving a precious artifact and a deadly trio of criminals.
‘Sam’ Spade is a private detective in San Francisco , in partnership with Miles Archer. The beautiful "Miss Wonderley" hires them to follow Floyd Thursby, who has run off with her sister. Archer ... (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)
The Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams
A young woman's struggle to find her place in society, while being held back by her family.
The play is introduced to the audience by Tom, the narrator and protagonist, as a memory play based on his recollection of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Because the play is based on memory, ... (Wikipedia)
The Glass Room
by Simon Mawer
A story of a family living through the turbulent years of early 20th century Europe.
High on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House has been built for newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a Jew married to a gentile. But, when the storm clouds of WW2 gather, the family must flee, ... (Goodreads)
Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
A young man's journey of love and loss set against the backdrop of the 1960s.
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of ... (Goodreads)
The Man Who Planted Trees
by Jean Giono
A shepherd single-handedly reforests a barren valley, transforming the land and the people who live there.
The story begins in the year 1913, when a young man who is the narrator was travelling alone on a hiking trip through Provence , France, and into the Alps , enjoying the relatively unspoiled ... (Wikipedia)
Beware of Pity
by Stefan Zweig
A story of unrequited love, detailing the consequences of being too kind to those in need.
The young lieutenant Anton Hofmiller is invited to the castle of the wealthy Hungarian Lajos Kekesfalva. He meets Kekesfalva's paralyzed daughter Edith and develops subtle affection and deep ... (Wikipedia)
Sanctuary
by William Faulkner
A Southern Gothic story of a man's attempt to escape the consequences of his past.
The novel is set in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County , Mississippi and takes place in May/June 1929. In May 1929, Horace Benbow, a lawyer frustrated with his life and family, suddenly leaves ... (Wikipedia)
Embers
by Sándor Márai
A story of a lifelong friendship between two men that is tested by secrets and betrayal.
Originally published in 1942 and now rediscovered to international acclaim, this taut and exquisitely structured novel by the Hungarian master Sandor Marai conjures the melancholy glamour of a ... (Goodreads)
The Tale of Genji
by Murasaki Shikibu
A classic Japanese novel about the romantic life of a nobleman and his various loves.
The work recounts the life of, Hikaru Genji, , or "Shining Genji", the son of an ancient Japanese emperor , known to readers as Emperor Kiritsubo, and a low-ranking, but beloved concubine called ... (Wikipedia)
Nine Stories
by J.D. Salinger
Nine short stories of insight into the human condition and its mysteries.
Nine Stories (1953) is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for ... (Goodreads)
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 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)
