Powered by a book like {foo}
Recommendations based on Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Deadby Fyodor Dostoevsky
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
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)
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)
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)
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 Complete Stories and Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe
A collection of dark and mysterious stories and poems, exploring the depths of the human condition.
This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Death of Ivan Ilych
by Leo Tolstoy
A man's journey of self-reflection in the face of death, confronting mortality and the meaning of life.
Ivan Ilyich lives a carefree life that is "most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible". Like everyone he knows, he spends his life climbing the social ladder. Enduring marriage to a ... (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)
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
An exploration of the relationship between the individual and the divine, viewed through the lens of nature and its rhythms.
A collection of quintessentially American poems, the seminal work of one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century. ... (Goodreads)
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)
Poor Folk
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A tale of romance between two unprivileged people, exploring the human condition of poverty.
Varvara Dobroselova and Makar Devushkin are second cousins twice-removed and live across from each other on the same street in terrible apartments. Devushkin's, for example, is merely a portioned-off ... (Wikipedia)
The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
by Sophocles
Ancient tragedy of a family's fall from grace due to a fateful prophecy.
English versions of Sophocles’ three great tragedies based on the myth of Oedipus, translated for a modern audience by two gifted poets. Index. ... (Barnes & Noble)
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
by William Blake
A poetic collection exploring the duality of human nature, innocence and experience.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience, is an collection of poems by William Blake., Note:, For a complete Table of Contents of the included poems, see the 'Questions' section below. This book appeared ... (Goodreads)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
by Ernest Hemingway
Collection of short stories depicting the human experience in all its complexities.
THE ONLY COMPLETE COLLECTION BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as ... (Goodreads)
The Wall
by Jean-Paul Sartre
A soldier's fight for survival in a World War II concentration camp.
'The Wall', the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor–seemingly there for the men's ... (Goodreads)
Mother
by Maxim Gorky
A journey of self-discovery for a young man, as he learns the truth of his past.
In his novel, Gorky portrays the life of a woman who works in a Russian factory doing hard manual labour and combating poverty and hunger, among other hardships. Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova is the real ... (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)
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 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)
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)
Nausea
by Jean-Paul Sartre
A philosophical exploration of the nature of existence and human freedom.
Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the ... (Goodreads)
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
by Nikolai Gogol
A collection of bizarre, humorous and satirical stories set in 19th century Russia.
When Pushkin first read some of the stories in this collection, he declared himself "amazed." "Here is real gaiety," he wrote, "honest, unconstrained, without mincing, without primness. And in places ... (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)
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)
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)
Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov
by Anton Chekhov
A collection of short stories depicting the lives of ordinary people in Russia.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, and Anna Karenina, which was an Oprah Book Club pick and million-copy bestseller, bring ... (Goodreads)
Tender Is the Night
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A young couple's tumultuous journey through love, wealth and tragedy.
Dick and Nicole Diver are a glamorous couple who rent a villa in the South of France and surround themselves with a circle of friends, mainly Americans. Also staying at the nearby resort are Rosemary ... (Wikipedia)
The Complete Stories
by Franz Kafka
A collection of Kafka's surreal and haunting short stories, exploring the human condition and the absurdity of existence.
The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max ... (Goodreads)
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)
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.
The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (Wikipedia)
