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Recommendations based on Iceby Anna Kavan
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The Man in the High Castle
by Philip K. Dick
Set in an alternate 1962, a man must confront a dark and oppressive new world order.
It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty ... (Goodreads)
The Drowned World
by J.G. Ballard
A post-apocalyptic world where civilization has been drowned by rising temperatures.
Set in the year 2145 in a post-apocalyptic and unrecognisable London, The Drowned World is a setting of tropical temperatures, flooding and accelerated evolution. , The Earth went back to its ... (Wikipedia)
The Sheltering Sky
by Paul Bowles
An exploration of the human condition, as a couple travel through the Sahara desert.
The story centers on Port Moresby and his wife Kit, a married couple originally from New York who travel to the North African desert accompanied by their friend Tunner. The journey, initially an ... (Wikipedia)
The Third Policeman
by Flann O'Brien
A bizarre yet darkly funny tale of a man's descent into a surreal world of mischievous creatures and strange events.
The Third Policeman is set in rural Ireland and is narrated by a dedicated amateur scholar of de Selby , a scientist and philosopher. , The narrator, whose name we never learn, is orphaned at a young ... (Wikipedia)
Tropic of Cancer
by Henry Miller
A young writer's journey of self-exploration in Paris, confronting life, love and lust.
Now hailed as an American classic Tropic of Cancer , Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a ... (Goodreads)
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)
Cosmopolis
by Don DeLillo
A day in the life of a billionaire, revealing the absurdity of a materialistic society.
Cosmopolis is the story of Eric Packer, a 28-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager who makes an odyssey across midtown Manhattan to get a haircut. He drives around in a stretch limo , which is ... (Wikipedia)
What Belongs to You
by Garth Greenwell
An exploration of intimacy, desire, and the power of secrets in a foreign city.
Longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction • A Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction • A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the James Taite ... (Barnes & Noble)
Blood Music
by Greg Bear
Scientist unleashes microscopic organisms that rapidly evolve, transforming the world.
In the novel, renegade biotechnologist Vergil Ulam creates simple biological computers based on his own lymphocytes . Faced with orders from his nervous employer to destroy his work, he injects them ... (Wikipedia)
I Love Dick
by Chris Kraus
A woman's journey of self-discovery, exploring the limits of her desires.
All My Puny Sorrows
by Miriam Toews
A heart-wrenching story of two sisters as one battles depression and the other struggles to keep her alive.
The novel recounts the tumultuous relationship of the Von Riesen sisters, Elfrieda and Yolandi, the only children of an intellectual, free-spirited family from a conservative Mennonite community. ... (Wikipedia)
Nightwood
by Djuna Barnes
A lyrical exploration of the human condition, examining the innermost depths of the soul.
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (TLS). That time is the period between the two World Wars, ... (Goodreads)
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)
Swann's Way
by Marcel Proust
Autobiographical novel tracing the narrator's reminiscences of an aristocratic upbringing.
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar ... (Goodreads)
Excellent Women
by Barbara Pym
A shy spinster's journey of self-discovery, exploring the limitations of life as a single woman in 1950s England.
The book details the everyday life of its narrator, Mildred Lathbury, , a spinster in her thirties in 1950s Britain. Perpetually self-deprecating, but with the sharpest wit, Mildred is a part-time ... (Wikipedia)
Deadeye Dick
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A darkly comic story of a man's quest for redemption from a tragic past.
The novel's main character, Rudy Waltz, nicknamed Deadeye Dick , commits accidental manslaughter as a child (he carelessly shoots a gun out of a window and fatally strikes a pregnant woman) and lives ... (Wikipedia)
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
A journey through the absurdist world of entertainment, drugs, addiction & death.
There are four major interwoven narratives: , These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest , also referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat ". The film is so ... (Wikipedia)
The Demolished Man
by Alfred Bester
In a world where telepathy is the norm, a wealthy businessman plans a murder, but a telepathic detective is on his trail.
Ben Reich is the paranoid, impetuous owner of Monarch Utilities & Resources, a commercial cartel that the Reich family has possessed for generations. Monarch Utilities & Resources is in danger of ... (Wikipedia)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
by Philip K. Dick
A famous TV personality wakes up in a world where he is a nobody, hunted by the police.
The novel is set in a dystopian version of 1988, following a Second Civil War which led to the collapse of the United States' democratic institutions. The National Guard ("nats") and US police force ... (Wikipedia)
The Door
by Magda Szabó
A mysterious doorkeeper guards the door between two worlds, changing the lives of two women.
The novel begins with Magda, the narrator, recounting the recurring dream that haunts her in her old age. As Magda explains, after waking up from this dream, she is forced to face the fact that "I ... (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)
Eileen
by Ottessa Moshfegh
Eileen, a disturbed young woman, works at a boys' prison and becomes involved in a crime. A dark and unsettling character study.
The story of an unhappy 24-year-old woman named Eileen who works at a prison, and what happens to her during a bitter Massachusetts winter in 1964. The novel was well received by, The New York Times, ... (Wikipedia)
The Heart of the Matter
by Graham Greene
A British police officer in West Africa struggles with his faith, morality, and loyalty during wartime.
Major Scobie lives in a colony on the west coast of Africa during World War II , and is responsible for local security during wartime. His wife Louise, an unhappy, solitary woman who loves literature ... (Wikipedia)
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
A group of expatriates in 1920s Europe, struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of WWI.
On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée usually identified as Lady Brett ... (Wikipedia)
Austerlitz
by W.G. Sebald
A man discovers his past and identity through the story of a Jewish boy who escaped Nazi Germany.
Jacques Austerlitz, the main character in the book, is an architectural historian who encounters and befriends the solitary narrator in Antwerp during the 1960s. Gradually we come to understand his ... (Wikipedia)
Lilith's Brood
by Octavia E. Butler
Humanity's struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, amongst a new species of aliens.
Lilith Iyapo is in the Andes, mourning the death of her family, when war destroys Earth. Centuries later, she is resurrected – by miraculously powerful unearthly beings, the Oankali. Driven by an ... (Goodreads)
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)
Ariel
by Sylvia Plath
A collection of raw and intense poems that explore themes of death, femininity, and personal struggle.
Sylvia Plath's celebrated collection. When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel . Her husband, Ted Hughes, brought the ... (Goodreads)
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)
Howards End
by E.M. Forster
Exploration of the societal divides in early 20th century England, and the consequences of class prejudice.
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the ... (Goodreads)
