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Recommendations based on Adam și Evaby Liviu Rebreanu
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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)
Nobody's Boy
by Hector Malot
A young boy's journey of survival, relying on his own resourcefulness to make his way in the world.
A compelling story in which orphaned Remi gets hired out to a traveling street entertainer when his foster parents fall on hard times. Going from village to village with its act, ‘nobody’s boy’ has ... (Goodreads)
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)
The Sorrows of Young Werther
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A young man's struggle to reconcile his intense emotions with the realities of society.
This is Goethe's first novel, published in 1774. Written in diary form, it tells the tale of an unhappy, passionate young man hopelessly in love with Charlotte, the wife of a friend - a man who he ... (Goodreads)
When Nietzsche Wept
by Irvin D. Yalom
Exploration of the relationship between a doctor and his patient, a tormented philosopher.
From the acclaimed author of Love's Executioner and Schopenhauer’s Couch , comes a “fascinating…shrewd intellectual thriller” ( Los Angeles Times Book Review ) about pioneering Viennese psychoanalyst ... (Barnes & Noble)
Island Beneath the Sea
by Isabel Allende
Epic story of a young slave's journey of resilience, emancipation and freedom.
The story opens on the island of Saint-Domingue (current day La Hispaniola ) in the late 18th century. Zarité (known as Tété) is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white ... (Wikipedia)
Requiem for a Dream
by Hubert Selby Jr.
A tale of four characters and their struggles with addiction, leading to a devastating climax.
This story follows the lives of Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion Silver, and his best friend Tyrone C. Love, who are all searching for the key to their dreams in their own ways. In ... (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)
The Red and the Black
by Stendhal
A young man's ambitious rise in 19th century French society, as he navigates through its politics and passions.
In two volumes,, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century, tells the story of Julien Sorel's life in France's rigid social structure restored after the disruptions of the French ... (Wikipedia)
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)
How I Became Stupid
by Martin Page
A man decides to become stupid to escape the pressures of modern life, but finds it harder than he thought.
Ignorance is bliss, or so hopes Antoine, the lead character in Martin Page's stinging satire, "How I Became Stupid" a modern day "Candide" with a Darwin Award-like sensibility. A twenty-five-year-old ... (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)
The Ladies' Paradise
by Émile Zola
A story of ambition and romance set in the world of a 19th Century Parisian department store.
The Ladies Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the rise of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the ... (Goodreads)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
A story of two unlikely outcasts who find solace and comfort in each other's company.
The story revolves mainly around the characters of Renée Michel and Paloma Josse, residents of an upper-middle class Left Bank apartment building at 7 Rue de Grenelle – one of the most elegant ... (Wikipedia)
All the Names
by José Saramago
A story of investigation into an old bureaucratic mystery and the search for a missing woman.
The main setting of the novel is the Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths located in an ambiguous and unnamed city. This municipal archive holds the record cards for all of the residents ... (Wikipedia)
The Decameron
by Giovanni Boccaccio
A collection of tales of love, adventure, and comedy set in medieval Florence.
The Decameron (c.1351) is an entertaining series of one hundred stories written in the wake of the Black Death. The stories are told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble ... (Goodreads)
Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
A shipwrecked sailor's struggle to survive on an isolated island, and his eventual redemption.
Crusoe (the family name corrupted from the German name "Kreutznaer") set sail from Kingston upon Hull on a sea voyage in August 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to pursue a ... (Wikipedia)
Twenty Years After
by Alexandre Dumas
Musketeers reunite to battle political intrigue and enemies of the French crown.
'At this game, whoever does not kill is killed.' Twenty Years After (1845), the sequel to The Three Musketeers , is a supreme creation of suspense and heroic adventure. Two decades have passed since ... (Goodreads)
Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
by Erich Maria Remarque
A refugee's struggle for survival in a world of turmoil and violence in 1930s Europe.
Set in 1939, and, despite having no permission to perform surgery, Ravic, a very accomplished German surgeon and a stateless refugee living in Paris, has been ghost-operating on patients for two ... (Wikipedia)
The Three Musketeers
by Alexandre Dumas
An adventurous tale of friendship, courage, and battle in 17th century France.
In 1625 France, d'Artagnan leaves his family in Gascony and travels to Paris to join the Musketeers of the Guard . At a house in Meung-sur-Loire , an older man derides d'Artagnan's horse. Insulted, ... (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)
Inés of My Soul
by Isabel Allende
A historical novel of a woman's struggles and triumphs in colonial Latin America.
This historial novel is about the main facts of the life of Inés (an important figure in Chile), written in older Ines' first-person voice, with its intended audience to be Ines' adoptive daughter, ... (Wikipedia)
Sophie's Choice
by William Styron
A survivor of the Holocaust is confronted with a devastating moral dilemma.
Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel, has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding house in ... (Wikipedia)
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
by José Saramago
A retelling of the life of Jesus Christ, delving into his motivations and emotions.
This is a skeptic' s journey into the meaning of God and of human existence. At once an ironic rendering of the life of Christ and a beautiful novel, Saramago' s tale has sparked intense discussion ... (Goodreads)
Le Grand Meaulnes
by Alain-Fournier
A young man's journey of adventure, romance, and self-discovery.
François Seurel, the 15-year-old narrator of the book, is the son of M. Seurel, who is the director of the mixed-ages school in a small village in the Sologne , a region of lakes and sandy forests in ... (Wikipedia)
Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
by Thomas Mann
A story of a family's decline, tracing four generations of a wealthy German family.
In 1835, the wealthy and respected Buddenbrooks, a family of grain merchants, invite their friends and relatives to dinner in their new home in Lübeck , Germany . The family consists of patriarch ... (Wikipedia)
The House of the Dead
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Prisoners of a Siberian labor camp struggle to survive in a harsh and oppressive environment.
Accused of political subversion as a young man, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp — a horrifying experience from which he developed this ... (Goodreads)
My Name Is Red
by Orhan Pamuk
An art mystery set in 16th century Istanbul, delving into the power of art, religion and love.
At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of ... (Goodreads)
The Magus
by John Fowles
A man's search for truth, enlightenment and freedom amid a web of deception.
The story reflects the perspective of Nicholas Urfe, a young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet. After graduation, he briefly works as a teacher at a small school, but becomes bored and decides to ... (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)
