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Recommendations based on The Moon and Sixpenceby W. Somerset Maugham
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Of Human Bondage
by W. Somerset Maugham
A young man's struggles to find a sense of purpose, despite a series of catastrophic misfortunes.
The book begins with the death of Helen Carey, the much beloved mother of nine-year-old Philip Carey. Philip has a club foot and his father had died a few months before. Now orphaned, he is sent to ... (Wikipedia)
The Painted Veil
by W. Somerset Maugham
A married couple's journey to uncover the truth of their relationship amidst a deadly epidemic.
Maugham uses a third-person-limited point of view in this story, where Kitty Garstin is the focal character . Garstin, a pretty upper-middle class debutante, squanders her early youth amusing herself ... (Wikipedia)
The Razor's Edge
by W. Somerset Maugham
A spiritual journey in search of personal fulfillment, as an individual in a rapidly changing world.
Maugham begins by characterizing his story as not really a novel but a thinly veiled true account. He includes himself as a minor character, a writer who drifts in and out of the lives of the major ... (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)
For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
A soldier's story of courage and survival in the Spanish Civil War.
The novel graphically describes the brutality of the Spanish Civil War. It is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist, Robert Jordan. It draws on Hemingway's own ... (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 Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
A romantic drama set in the high society of 19th century New York, exploring the limits of love and longing.
Newland Archer, gentleman lawyer and heir to one of New York City's most illustrious families, happily anticipates his highly desirable marriage to the sheltered and beautiful May Welland. Yet he ... (Wikipedia)
Evil Under the Sun
by Agatha Christie
Detective Hercule Poirot investigates a murder on a resort island, uncovering secrets and lies.
Hercule Poirot takes a quiet holiday at a secluded hotel in Devon. He finds that the other hotel guests include: Arlena Marshall, her husband Kenneth, and her step-daughter Linda; Horace Blatt; Major ... (Wikipedia)
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
A group of expatriates in 1920s Europe, struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of WWI.
On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée usually identified as Lady Brett ... (Wikipedia)
The Mayor of Casterbridge
by Thomas Hardy
A man sells his wife and daughter while drunk, then becomes a successful businessman and mayor, but his past haunts him.
At a country fair near Casterbridge in Wessex Michael Henchard, a 21-year-old hay-trusser, argues with his wife Susan. Drunk on rum-laced furmity he auctions her off, along with their baby daughter ... (Wikipedia)
Resurrection
by Leo Tolstoy
A wealthy aristocrat seeks redemption after falling in love with a prostitute and being wrongly accused of her murder.
Resurrection (1899) is the last of Tolstoy's major novels. It tells the story of a nobleman's attempt to redeem the suffering his youthful philandering inflicted on a peasant girl who ends up a ... (Goodreads)
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
A soldier's harrowing experience of the horrors of war.
The book tells the story of Paul Bäumer, who belongs to a group of German soldiers on the Western Front during World War I . The patriotic speeches of his teacher Kantorek had led the whole class to ... (Wikipedia)
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
A butler reflects on his past, grappling with the lost opportunities of a life devoted to service.
The novel tells, in first-person narration , the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (who is recently deceased, and whom Stevens ... (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)
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)
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)
Nine Stories
by J.D. Salinger
Nine short stories of insight into the human condition and its mysteries.
Nine Stories (1953) is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for ... (Goodreads)
Three Comrades
by Erich Maria Remarque
Three German friends struggle to survive in the aftermath of World War I, facing poverty, illness, and political turmoil.
The city, which never is referred to by name (however, it is likely Berlin), is crowded by a growing number of jobless and marked by increasing violence between left and right. The novel starts in ... (Wikipedia)
The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene
A man's obsession and journey of love, struggling with faith, hatred and forgiveness.
"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..." "This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening ... (Goodreads)
The Naked and the Dead
by Norman Mailer
Based on WWII, a journey of a platoon of soldiers in the Pacific theater as they confront death and the harsh realities of war.
The novel is divided into four parts: Wave; Argil and Mold; Plant and Phantom; and Wake. Within these parts are chorus sections, consisting of play-like dialogue between characters, as well as Time ... (Wikipedia)
The Beautiful and Damned
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A young couple's struggle to maintain their marriage while searching for financial stability.
The Beautiful and Damned tells the story of Anthony Patch in 1910s New York, a socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune; his complicated marriage to Gloria Gilbert; the couple's troubling ... (Wikipedia)
Journey Under the Midnight Sun
by Keigo Higashino
A decades-long murder mystery unravels in Tokyo, revealing the interconnected lives of two families.
When a man is found murdered in an abandoned building in Osaka in 1973, unflappable detective Sasagaki is assigned to the case. He begins to piece together the connection of two young people who are ... (Goodreads)
Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy
A tale of struggle and sorrow for a poor, uneducated man amid the rigid conventions of Victorian England.
The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Hardy's fictional county of Wessex ), who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on ... (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)
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 Postman Always Rings Twice
by James M. Cain
A crime drama of forbidden passion, deception and murder.
The story is narrated in the first person by Frank Chambers, a young drifter who stops at a rural California diner for a meal and ends up working there. The diner is operated by a beautiful young ... (Wikipedia)
The French Lieutenant's Woman
by John Fowles
A love story set in Victorian England, exploring the complexities of class, gender, and social norms.
Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the narrator identifies the novel's protagonist as Sarah Woodruff, the Woman of the title, also known as "Tragedy" and as "The French Lieutenant's Whore". She lives ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Zorba the Greek
by Nikos Kazantzakis
A man embarks on a journey of self-discovery, learning to embrace life with gusto and joy.
The book opens in a café in Piraeus , just before dawn on a gusty autumn morning. The year is most likely 1916. The narrator, a young Greek intellectual, resolves to set aside his books for a few ... (Wikipedia)
The Collector
by John Fowles
A man's obsession with a young woman leads to a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall and collects butterflies in his spare time. The first part of the novel tells the story from his point of ... (Wikipedia)
