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Recommendations based on Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtueby Marquis de Sade
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
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)
The 120 Days of Sodom
by Marquis de Sade
Four wealthy libertines indulge in extreme sexual and violent acts with a group of young victims over four months.
The 120 Days of Sodom is set in a remote medieval castle, high in the mountains and surrounded by forests, detached from the rest of the world, either at the end of Louis XIV 's reign or at the ... (Wikipedia)
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)
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)
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)
Candide
by Voltaire
A young man's satirical journey through life, encountering misfortune and eventual optimism.
Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a ... (Goodreads)
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
by Pablo Neruda
Collection of poems exploring love, heartache, and the complexities of relationships.
When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin's incomparable translation faces the ... (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)
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)
Death with Interruptions
by José Saramago
A mysterious phenomenon that stops all deaths leading to a dilemma of moral, ethical and social implications.
The book, set in an unnamed, landlocked country at a point in the unspecified past, opens with the end of death. Mysteriously, at the stroke of midnight on January 1, no one in the country ... (Wikipedia)
The Waste Land and Other Poems
by T.S. Eliot
A collection of poems exploring themes of identity, mortality, and spiritual and psychological desolation.
The Waste Land and Other Poems , by T. S. Eliot , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including ... (Barnes & Noble)
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)
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)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Süskind
A murder mystery set in 18th century France, exploring the depths of human obsession.
An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of ... (Goodreads)
Hunger
by Knut Hamsun
The story of a man's battle against poverty and his descent into near-madness.
The novel's first-person protagonist, an unnamed vagrant with intellectual leanings, probably in his late twenties, wanders the streets of Norway's capital, Kristiania ( Oslo ), in pursuit of ... (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)
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)
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)
The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde
A lighthearted comedy of manners, full of witty dialogue and satirizing Victorian society.
Oscar Wilde's madcap farce about mistaken identities, secret engagements, and lovers entanglements still delights readers more than a century after its 1895 publication and premiere performance. The ... (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)
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)
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)
Venus in Furs
by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
A man becomes obsessed with a woman who treats him as her slave, leading to a twisted and erotic exploration of power dynamics.
The framing story concerns a man who dreams of speaking to Venus about love while she wears furs. The unnamed narrator tells his dreams to a friend, Severin, who tells him how to break himself of his ... (Wikipedia)
Of Love and Other Demons
by Gabriel García Márquez
A young girl is thrown into a spiritual journey of faith and superstition as she faces a mysterious illness.
Sierva Maria de Todos Los Angeles Sierra is the twelve-year-old daughter of the Marquis and his wife Bernarda. Her hair has never been cut, and was promised to the saints when she was born with the ... (Wikipedia)
Carmilla
by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Gothic horror novella following a young woman's mysterious encounter with a female vampire.
Le Fanu presents the story as part of the casebook of Dr. Hesselius, whose departures from medical orthodoxy rank him as the first occult detective in literature. , Laura, the teenage protagonist, ... (Wikipedia)
The Woman Destroyed
by Simone de Beauvoir
A collection of three novellas exploring the consequences of societal expectations on women's lives.
Three long stories that draw the reader into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises. ... (Goodreads)
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
by Angela Carter
A collection of subversive, darkly fantastical tales exploring the power of femininity.
Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural ... (Goodreads)
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)
Aztec
by Gary Jennings
Epic historical fiction, following a boy's journey to manhood in the Aztec Empire.
Aztec is the extraordinary story of the last and greatest native civilization of North America. Told in the words of one of the most robust and memorable characters in modern fiction, Mixtli-Dark ... (Goodreads)
