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Recommendations based on Oracle Nightby Paul Auster
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The Brooklyn Follies
by Paul Auster
An aging man's journey of self-discovery, revealing the beauty and complexity of life.
60-year-old Nathan Glass returns to Brooklyn after his wife has left him. He is recovering from lung cancer and is looking for "a quiet place to die". In Brooklyn he meets his nephew , Tom, whom he ... (Wikipedia)
The Book of Illusions
by Paul Auster
A grieving professor is transported on a journey of the past, unlocking secrets of his deceased wife.
Six months after losing his wife and two young sons, Vermont Professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity. Then one night, he stumbles upon a clip ... (Goodreads)
The New York Trilogy
by Paul Auster
A series of interconnected stories exploring the hidden mysteries of New York City.
A 2006 reissue by Penguin Books is fronted by new pulp magazine -style covers by comic book illustrator Art Spiegelman . The first story, City of Glass , features an author of detective fiction who ... (Wikipedia)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
What I Loved
by Siri Hustvedt
A story of two friends, their families, and the art world in New York City. A tale of love, loss, and the complexities of human relationships.
What I Loved opens with a painting of a woman 'wearing only a man's T-shirt', with the artist's shadow across the canvas. The protagonist , art historian Leon Hertzberg (Leo), purchases the painting ... (Wikipedia)
Franz Kafka's The Castle
by David Fishelson
A man's struggle against an oppressive bureaucracy in a mysterious castle.
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)
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)
Freedom
by Jonathan Franzen
A family saga revealing the struggles of a divided nation, and the power of love to heal.
The novel opens with a brief look at the Berglund family during their time living in St. Paul, Minnesota , from the perspective of their nosy neighbors. The Berglunds are portrayed as an ideal ... (Wikipedia)
Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
A young man's journey of love and loss set against the backdrop of the 1960s.
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of ... (Goodreads)
Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the boundaries between the real and surreal.
Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd-numbered chapters tell the 15-year-old ... (Wikipedia)
Here I Am
by Jonathan Safran Foer
A multi-generational Jewish family struggles to make sense of the chaos of the 21st century.
Christian Lorentzen has described the plot as a blend of several different events, including "[a] divorce, a suicide, a bar mitzvah, an earthquake, an all-out Middle Eastern war, and the putting to ... (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)
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 Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann
A young man's journey of self-exploration and personal growth during a long stay at a Swiss sanatorium.
The narrative opens in the decade before World War I . It introduces the protagonist, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family. Following the early death of his parents, Castorp has ... (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)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
An exploration of the nature of storytelling, as two readers attempt to uncover the lost story of the novel's title.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration—"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to ... (Goodreads)
Seeing
by José Saramago
A story of an old man's journey to find meaning in a world of chaos and suffering.
Seeing is set in the same unnamed country featured in, Blindness,. The story begins with a parliamentary election, in which the majority (83%) of the populace cast blank ballots. The first half of ... (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)
High-Rise
by J.G. Ballard
In a high-rise building, social boundaries begin to break down as the inhabitants descend into chaos and violence.
Following his divorce, doctor and medical-school lecturer Robert Laing moves into his new apartment on the 25th floor of a recently completed high-rise building on the outskirts of London. This tower ... (Wikipedia)
The Faithful Spy
by Alex Berenson
A former CIA agent goes undercover in Al Qaeda to prevent a terrorist attack.
A New York Times reporter has drawn upon his experience covering the occupation in Iraq to write the most gripping and chillingly plausible thriller of the post-9/11 era. Alex Berenson’s debut novel ... (Goodreads)
Stoner
by John Williams
An academic's life of quiet desperation, finding solace in literature.
William Stoner is born on a small farm in 1891. After high school, the county agent advises he go to agriculture school. Stoner enrolls in the University of Missouri , where all agriculture students ... (Wikipedia)
The Summer Without Men
by Siri Hustvedt
After her husband asks for a pause in their marriage, Mia spends the summer in her hometown, reflecting on life and relationships.
"And who among us would deny Jane Austen her happy endings or insist that Cary Grant and Irene Dunne should get back together at the end of, The Awful Truth,? There are tragedies and there are ... (Barnes & Noble)
Underworld
by Don DeLillo
A sweeping narrative of two people, their pasts and their parallel paths through history.
The prologue is a fictionalized account of The Shot Heard 'Round the World , a home run by Bobby Thomson on October 3, 1951, that won the National League pennant for the New York Giants against their ... (Wikipedia)
The Reader
by Bernhard Schlink
A man's journey of understanding, uncovering a dark secret from his past.
Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of ... (Goodreads)
Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
A day in the life of a high-society woman, delving into her inner thoughts and feelings.
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about ... (Wikipedia)
The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
A journey through a web of intertwining stories, searching for the meaning of love.
Approximately 70 years before the present, the 10-year-old Polish-Jewish Leopold (Leo) Gursky falls in love with his neighbor Alma Mereminski. The two begin a relationship that develops over the ... (Wikipedia)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
One Step Behind
by Henning Mankell
A detective solves a murder mystery, uncovering a web of corruption in the process.
It is Midsummer's Eve. Three young friends meet in a wood to act out an elaborate masque. But unknown to them, they are being watched. With a bullet each, all three are murdered. Soon afterwards, one ... (Goodreads)
The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories
by Tim Burton
Collection of darkly humorous, twisted tales of peculiar and fantastical characters.
From breathtaking stop-action animation to bittersweet modern fairy tales, filmmaker Tim Burton has become known for his unique visual brilliance – witty and macabre at once. Now he gives birth to a ... (Goodreads)
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)
