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Recommendations based on El Alephby Jorge Luis Borges
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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 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)
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)
Les Fleurs du Mal
by Charles Baudelaire
Collection of poems exploring the beauty and depravity of human nature.
Charles Baudelaire's 1857 masterwork was scandalous in its day for its portrayals of sex, same-sex love, death, the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city and lost innocence, Les Fleurs ... (Goodreads)
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
An exploration of the relationship between the individual and the divine, viewed through the lens of nature and its rhythms.
A collection of quintessentially American poems, the seminal work of one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century. ... (Goodreads)
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
A Franciscan friar investigates a series of murders in a medieval monastery, uncovering a sinister plot.
In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
by G.K. Chesterton
A man is recruited to a secret society, only to discover the sinister truth behind it.
In Edwardian-era London, Gabriel Syme is recruited at Scotland Yard to a secret anti- anarchist police corps. Lucian Gregory, an anarchistic poet, lives in the suburb of Saffron Park. Syme meets him ... (Wikipedia)
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)
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 Silmarillion
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Epic saga of the history of Middle-Earth, a world filled with mythical creatures.
The Silmarillion is an account of the Elder Days, of the First Age of Tolkien’s world. It is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back, and in whose events some of ... (Goodreads)
The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory
by Jorge Luis Borges
A surreal exploration of reality and the power of imagination.
The acclaimed translation of Borges's valedictory stories, in its first stand-alone edition, , Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of the twentieth century. Now ... (Barnes & Noble)
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)
The Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe
A man is visited by a mysterious raven, leading him on a journey of grief and reflection.
In Gustave Doré, one of the most prolific and successful book illustrators of the late 19h century, Edgar Allan Poe's renowned poem The Raven found perhaps its most perfect artistic interpreter. ... (Goodreads)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne
A thrilling adventure beneath the depths of the sea, discovering a strange and wondrous world.
During the year 1866, ships of various nationalities sight a mysterious sea monster , which, it is later suggested, might be a gigantic narwhal . The U.S. government assembles an expedition in New ... (Wikipedia)
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
by Gabriel García Márquez
A murder mystery narrated by the townspeople and tracing the events leading up to the crime.
The non-linear story, told by an anonymous narrator, begins with the morning of Santiago Nasar's death. The reader learns that Santiago lives with his mother, Placida Linero; the cook, Victoria ... (Wikipedia)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson
A man's internal struggle between good and evil forces, as he attempts to reconcile his dual personalities.
Gabriel John Utterson and his cousin Richard Enfield reach the door of a large house on their weekly walk. Enfield tells Utterson that months ago, he saw a sinister-looking man named Edward Hyde ... (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)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
A young girl's surreal journey down a rabbit hole leading to a mysterious and magical realm.
After a tumble down the rabbit hole, Alice finds herself far away from home in the absurd world of Wonderland. As mind-bending as it is delightful, Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel is pure magic for young ... (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)
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)
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)
Nausea
by Jean-Paul Sartre
A philosophical exploration of the nature of existence and human freedom.
Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the ... (Goodreads)
The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy
by Stanisław Lem
A satirical sci-fi journey of a man struggling to make sense of a world of surrealism and absurdity.
Ijon Tichy is sent to the Eighth World Futurological Congress in Costa Rica , by professor Tarantoga . The conference is set to focus on the world's overpopulation crisis and ways of dealing with it. ... (Wikipedia)
Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
by Jonathan Swift
A fanciful journey to lands of tiny people, giant people, talking horses, and other strange creatures.
The travel begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. During his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck ... (Wikipedia)
Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A portrait of the struggles of a troubled man, exploring his inner turmoil.
The novel is divided into two parts. Serving as an introduction into the mind of the narrator, the first part of Notes from Underground is split into nine chapters: The narrator observes that utopian ... (Wikipedia)
The Martian Chronicles
by Ray Bradbury
Human colonists struggle for survival on Mars, facing the challenges of a new world.
The strange and wonderful tale of man’s experiences on Mars, filled with intense images and astonishing visions. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection. The Martian Chronicles tells the story of ... (Goodreads)
Black Hole
by Charles Burns
A darkly comic journey through the lives of teenagers in the 1970s, dealing with anxieties and insecurities.
Set in the suburbs of Seattle during the mid 1970s, the story follows a group of teenagers who contract a mysterious sexually transmitted disease referred to as "the Bug", which causes them to ... (Wikipedia)
The Children of Húrin
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Epic tale of tragedy and tragedy, of a father's sins passed down to his children.
This tale of Middle-earth's First Age, which appeared in incomplete forms in the posthumously published, The Silmarillion, and, Unfinished Tales, , also edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher, only ... (Goodreads)
Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A collection of four works exploring the human psyche, morality, and existentialism through the lens of Russian society.
The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg . He is contemplating the ridiculousness of his own life, and his recent realization that nothing matters to him any more. It ... (Wikipedia)
