Powered by a book like {foo}
Recommendations based on Agamemnonby Aeschylus
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
by Aeschylus
Tragedy of a cursed family and their struggle to find the truth and justice.
Alternate cover edition can be found, here,, here,, here,, here, In the Oresteia—the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity—Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder ... (Goodreads)
Oedipus Rex
by Sophocles
Tragic tale of a man's inescapable destiny and the consequences of his actions.
Oedipus, King of Thebes, sends his brother-in-law, Creon, to ask advice of the oracle at Delphi , concerning a plague ravaging Thebes. Creon returns to report that the plague is the result of ... (Wikipedia)
Prometheus Bound
by Aeschylus
Prometheus, a Titan, is punished by Zeus for giving fire to humans. He is chained to a rock and tormented by various gods.
For readers accustomed to the relatively undramatic standard translations of Prometheus Bound , this version by James Scully, a poet and winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize, and C. John Herington, one ... (Goodreads)
Antigone
by Sophocles
A tragedy about a woman's struggle to uphold justice amidst oppressive laws.
The curse placed on Oedipus lingers and haunts a younger generation in this new and brilliant translation of Sophocles' classic drama. The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Antigone is an ... (Goodreads)
Electra
by Sophocles
Electra seeks revenge on her mother and stepfather for the murder of her father, Agamemnon.
Electra,, Elektra, or, The Electra, , ( Ancient Greek : ΗΛΕΚΤΡΑ , , Ēlektra ) is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles . Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the, Philoctetes, (409 ... (Wikipedia)
Medea
by Euripides
Tragedy of a woman's vengeful wrath against her husband and his family.
One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, Medea centers on the myth of Jason, leader of the Argonauts, who has won the dragon-guarded treasure of the Golden Fleece with the help of ... (Goodreads)
Lysistrata
by Aristophanes
Women of Greece uniting to end the Peloponnesian War through a sex strike.
These lines, spoken by the Athenian Lysistrata and her friend Calonice at the beginning of the play, , set the scene for the action that follows. Women, as represented by Calonice, are sly hedonists ... (Wikipedia)
Metamorphoses
by Ovid
A collection of tales of transformation, featuring gods and mortals.
Prized through the ages for its splendor and its savage, sophisticated wit, The Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of Western culture–the first attempt to link all the Greek myths, before and after ... (Goodreads)
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 Tempest
by William Shakespeare
A story of magical revenge, redemption, and forgiveness set on a remote island.
A ship is caught in a powerful storm, there is terror and confusion on board, and the vessel is shipwrecked. But the storm is a magical creation carried out by the spirit Ariel , and caused by the ... (Wikipedia)
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)
The Bacchae
by Euripides
A classic tragedy exploring the clash of divine and mortal power and the consequences of hubris.
The play begins before the palace at Thebes, with Dionysus telling the story of his birth and his reasons for visiting the city. Dionysus explains he is the son of a mortal woman, Semele, and a god, ... (Wikipedia)
King Lear
by William Shakespeare
An aging king's descent into madness reveals the consequences of pride and vanity.
Shakespeare’s King Lear challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the ... (Goodreads)
Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner
A tangled web of family secrets, betrayal, and tragedy in the American South.
Absalom, Absalom! details the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen , a white man born into poverty in West Virginia who moves to Mississippi with the complementary aims of gaining wealth and becoming a ... (Wikipedia)
The Complete Poems
by John Keats
A collection of Keats' poetry, showcasing his romantic and melancholic style, exploring themes of love, beauty, nature, and mortality.
Richard II
by William Shakespeare
King Richard II's downfall and deposition, as he loses the support of his nobles and faces the consequences of his actions.
Written in 1595, Richard II occupies a significant place in the Shakespeare canon, marking the transition from the earlier history plays dominated by civil war and stark power to a more nuanced ... (Goodreads)
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)
Endgame
by Samuel Beckett
A darkly humorous exploration of the human condition and the inevitability of death.
Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969; his literary output of plays, novels, stories, and poetry has earned him an uncontested place as one of the greatest writers of our ... (Goodreads)
The Aeneid
by Virgil
Epic tale of Aeneas and the founding of Rome, a fateful journey through the gods.
The Aeneid – thrilling, terrifying and poignant in equal measure – has inspired centuries of artists, writers and musicians. Virgil’s epic tale tells the story of Aeneas, a Trojan hero, who flees his ... (Goodreads)
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)
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 Three Sisters
by Anton Chekhov
Three sisters longing for a life beyond their small provincial town, exploring themes of family and love.
First performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901, The Three Sisters probes the lives and dreams of Olga, Masha, and Irina, former Muscovites now living in a provincial town from which they long to ... (Goodreads)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
An exploration of a young man's struggle to find his identity and place in the world.
The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an ... (Goodreads)
Inferno
by Dante Alighieri
An epic journey through the nine circles of Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil.
Of the great poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. In the Inferno, Dante not only judges sin but strives to ... (Goodreads)
The Golden Ass
by Apuleius
A young man’s misadventures, transformed into a donkey, as he embarks on a journey of transformation.
The prologue establishes an audience and a speaker, who defines himself by location, education, occupation, and his kinship with the philosophers Plutarch and Sextus of Chaeronea . The narrator ... (Wikipedia)
Uncle Vanya
by Anton Chekhov
A study of the ennui and monotony of rural life, with characters struggling with their place in the world.
A garden in Professor Serebryakov's country estate. Astrov and Marina discuss how old Astrov has grown, and his boredom with his life as a country doctor. Vanya enters, and complains of the ... (Wikipedia)
The Seagull
by Anton Chekhov
A tale of unrequited love and personal frustrations set in a rural Russian town.
The play takes place on a country estate owned by Pyotr Sorin, a retired senior civil servant in failing health. He is the brother of the actress Irina Arkadin, who has just arrived at the estate for ... (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)
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)
