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Recommendations based on Il cavaliere inesistenteby Italo Calvino
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The Baron in the Trees
by Italo Calvino
A young boy's journey of self-discovery as he lives among the trees, away from society.
A landmark new translation of a Calvino classic, a whimsical, spirited novel that imagines a life lived entirely on its own terms Cosimo di Rondó, a young Italian nobleman of the eighteenth century, ... (Barnes & Noble)
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 Late Mattia Pascal
by Luigi Pirandello
A man's journey to reclaim his identity and freedom from a life of dullness and unhappiness.
The protagonist, Mattia Pascal, finds that his promising youth has, through misfortune or misdeed, dissolved into a dreary dead-end job and a miserable marriage. His inheritance and the woman he ... (Wikipedia)
The Tartar Steppe
by Dino Buzzati
A young Italian soldier stationed at a remote fort in a desolate landscape, waiting for a mythical enemy.
The plot of the novel is Drogo's lifelong wait for a great war in which his life and the existence of the fort can prove its usefulness. The human need for giving life meaning and the soldier's ... (Wikipedia)
Cosmicomics
by Italo Calvino
A collection of stories that explore the mysteries of the universe, blending science and myth.
Italo Calvino's extraordinary imagination and intelligence combine here in an enchanting series of stories about the evolution of the universe. He makes his characters out of mathematical formulae ... (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)
Six Characters in Search of an Author
by Luigi Pirandello
A play exploring illusion and reality, as six characters search for a playwright to tell their story.
An acting company prepares to rehearse the play Mixing it Up by Luigi Pirandello. As the rehearsal is about to begin, they are unexpectedly interrupted by the arrival of six strange people. The ... (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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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 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)
One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
by Luigi Pirandello
A man's exploration of identity, uncovering the illusions of the external world.
Vitangelo Moscarda discovers by way of a completely irrelevant question that his wife poses to him that everyone he knows, everyone he has ever met, has constructed a Vitangelo, persona, in their own ... (Wikipedia)
Innocent Erendira and Other Stories
by Gabriel García Márquez
Short stories exploring the depths of human emotion and the power of love.
This is the story of a twelve year old who accidentally sets fire to the house where she lives with her grandmother. The grandmother decides that Erendira must pay her back for the loss, and sells ... (Wikipedia)
Faust, First Part
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A timeless story of a man's struggle between the forces of good and evil.
Goethe’s masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, Faust has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental ... (Goodreads)
Zeno's Conscience
by Italo Svevo
A comedic exploration of a man's life and his attempt to turn it around with the help of a psychologist.
The novel is presented as a diary written by Zeno, published by his doctor (who claims that it is full of lies). The doctor has left a little note in the beginning, saying he had Zeno write an ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited
by Aldous Huxley
A futuristic dystopia of a world devoid of freedom and morality.
The novel opens in the World State city of London in AF (After Ford) 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar ), where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination ... (Wikipedia)
No Exit
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Four strangers, trapped in a single room, confront terrifying truths of their existence.
Three damned souls, Joseph Garcin, Inèz Serrano, and Estelle Rigault, are brought to the same room in Hell and locked inside by a mysterious valet. They had all expected torture devices to punish ... (Wikipedia)
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
An epic love story spanning decades, exploring the power of true love.
The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's ... (Wikipedia)
Journey to the End of the Night
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
A darkly comic, nihilistic journey of self-discovery, following a man into the heart of an absurd world.
Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper-realistic, boiling over with black humor Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper realistic—boils over with bitter humor and revulsion at ... (Barnes & Noble)
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 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)
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)
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)
Life, the Universe and Everything
by Douglas Adams
An intergalactic quest to find the answer to the ultimate question of life.
After being stranded on pre-historic Earth after the events in, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, , Arthur Dent is met by his old friend Ford Prefect , who drags him into a space-time eddy , ... (Wikipedia)
Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar
Reflections of the Roman Emperor Hadrian on his life, death and the nature of existence.
Both an exploration of character and a reflection on the meaning of history, Memoirs of Hadrian has received international acclaim since its first publication in France in 1951. In it, Marguerite ... (Barnes & Noble)
Pinocchio
by Carlo Collodi
A wooden puppet's adventures and misadventures as he strives to become a real boy.
The story begins in Tuscany , Italy. A carpenter named Master Antonio, but whom everyone calls Master Cherry, has found a block of wood which he plans to carve into a leg for his table. When he ... (Wikipedia)
