Literary theme analysis, by a book like {foo}
Books about Paradox
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)
Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
An absurdist war satire highlighting the absurdity of bureaucracy and the human condition.
Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest—and most celebrated—books of all time. In recent years it has been named to ... (Goodreads)
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
by Lewis Carroll
Alice's fantastical journey through a strange and surreal world of her own making.
Chapter One – Looking-Glass House : Alice is playing with a white kitten (whom she calls "Snowdrop") and a black kitten (whom she calls "Kitty") when she ponders what the world is like on the other ... (Wikipedia)
Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman
A mysterious journey through a hidden realm of London, filled with danger and unexpected allies.
Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew and his trials and tribulations in London. At the start of the story, he is a young businessman, recently moved from Scotland and with a normal life ahead. ... (Wikipedia)
The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
A unique love story between a time-traveler and his wife, exploring questions of fate and destiny.
Using alternating first-person perspectives , the novel tells the stories of Henry DeTamble (born 1963), a librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago , and his wife, Clare Anne Abshire (born 1971), ... (Wikipedia)
The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy
by Stanisław Lem
A satirical sci-fi journey of a man struggling to make sense of a world of surrealism and absurdity.
Ijon Tichy is sent to the Eighth World Futurological Congress in Costa Rica , by professor Tarantoga . The conference is set to focus on the world's overpopulation crisis and ways of dealing with it. ... (Wikipedia)
To Say Nothing of the Dog
by Connie Willis
Time-traveling historian visits Victorian England in search of an artifact, amidst a comedy of errors.
Ned Henry is a time traveler in 1940 studying Coventry Cathedral after the Coventry Blitz of World War II . He is specifically searching for the location of the "Bishop's bird stump ", a MacGuffin ... (Wikipedia)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
A young girl's surreal journey down a rabbit hole leading to a mysterious and magical realm.
After a tumble down the rabbit hole, Alice finds herself far away from home in the absurd world of Wonderland. As mind-bending as it is delightful, Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel is pure magic for young ... (Goodreads)
4 3 2 1
by Paul Auster
An exploration of alternate realities, tracing the lives of four identical boys who go their own ways.
Nearly two weeks early, on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. ... (Goodreads)
Laughable Loves
by Milan Kundera
Collection of interconnected stories exploring the complexities of love, relationships and life.
Laughable Loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968, but was then was subsequently banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or rather with the ... (Goodreads)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
by Milan Kundera
An exploration of the power of memory and the meaning of life through a series of interconnected stories.
The first section occurs in 1971 and is the story of Mirek, as he explores his memories of Zdena. Knowing that he loved this ugly woman has left a blemish, and he hopes to rectify this by destroying ... (Wikipedia)
Ficciones
by Jorge Luis Borges
A collection of short stories exploring the limits of the imagination.
The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his ... (Goodreads)
Collected Fictions
by Jorge Luis Borges
An anthology of Borges' masterful short stories, exploring the depths of human thought and imagination.
Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, ... (Goodreads)
In Persuasion Nation
by George Saunders
A collection of satirical short stories that critique consumerism, media, and politics in modern America.
The stories In Persuasion Nation are easily his best work yet. "The Red Bow,"about a town consumed by pet-killing hysteria, won a 2004 National Magazine Award and "Bohemians," the story of two ... (Goodreads)
Senlin Ascends
by Josiah Bancroft
A captivating odyssey through a mysterious tower filled with magical and treacherous surprises.
The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel in the world. Immense as a mountain, the ancient Tower holds unnumbered ringdoms, warring and peaceful, stacked one on the other like the layers of a cake. ... (Goodreads)
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings
by Jorge Luis Borges
A collection of metaphysical tales and philosophical musings exploring the nature of reality.
Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in ... (Goodreads)
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
by Douglas Adams
A comedic tale of a man's journey through the universe, encountering aliens and coming to terms with his own identity.
While hitchhiking through the galaxy, Arthur Dent is dropped off on a planet in a rainstorm. He appears to be in England on Earth, even though he saw the planet destroyed by the Vogons . He has been ... (Wikipedia)
The Third Policeman
by Flann O'Brien
A bizarre yet darkly funny tale of a man's descent into a surreal world of mischievous creatures and strange events.
The Third Policeman is set in rural Ireland and is narrated by a dedicated amateur scholar of de Selby , a scientist and philosopher. , The narrator, whose name we never learn, is orphaned at a young ... (Wikipedia)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass
by Lewis Carroll
A fantastical journey of a curious young girl down the rabbit hole into a surreal world.
Chapter One – Looking-Glass House : Alice is playing with a white kitten (whom she calls "Snowdrop") and a black kitten (whom she calls "Kitty") when she ponders what the world is like on the other ... (Wikipedia)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
by Douglas Adams
An eccentric detective's surreal journey through time and space to solve a mysterious case.
Richard MacDuff attends the Coleridge dinner at his old college St Cedd's , where he witnesses his former tutor, Professor Urban "Reg" Chronotis , perform an inexplicable magic trick in which he ... (Wikipedia)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal exploration of two separate yet interwoven realities.
The story is split between parallel narratives. The odd-numbered chapters take place in the 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland', although the phrase is not used anywhere in the text, only in page headers. The ... (Wikipedia)
Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
A collection of short stories exploring the human experience and the complexities of truth.
This collection features a brilliant new translation of the Japanese master's stories, from the source for the movie Rashōmon to his later, more autobiographical writings. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa ... (Goodreads)
The Far Side Gallery
by Gary Larson
Collection of single-panel cartoons exploring the absurd, surreal and humorous aspects of life.
1984 FarWorks, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Far Side and the Larson signature are registered trademarks of FarWorks, Inc. The Far Side Gallery is an anthology of Gary Larson's The Far Side comic ... (Goodreads)
Pale Fire
by Vladimir Nabokov
A darkly comic and philosophical exploration of art, sanity, and the nature of reality.
Shade's poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and ... (Wikipedia)
Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A portrait of the struggles of a troubled man, exploring his inner turmoil.
The novel is divided into two parts. Serving as an introduction into the mind of the narrator, the first part of Notes from Underground is split into nine chapters: The narrator observes that utopian ... (Wikipedia)
Fragments
by Heraclitus
A collection of aphorisms and philosophical musings on the nature of change, the universe, and human existence.
Fragments of wisdom from the ancient world In the sixth century b.c.—twenty-five hundred years before Einstein—Heraclitus of Ephesus declared that energy is the essence of matter, that everything ... (Goodreads)
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
by Franz Kafka
A collection of surreal stories exploring the depths of the human condition.
Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Franz Kafka is now one of the world’s most widely read and discussed authors. His nightmarish novels and short stories have come to symbolize modern man’s ... (Goodreads)
Thief of Time
by Terry Pratchett
A humorous fantasy adventure to save time from being stolen.
The Auditors hire young clockmaker Jeremy Clockson to build a perfect glass clock, without telling him that this will stop time and thereby eliminate human unpredictability from the universe. Death ... (Wikipedia)
The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon
A surreal journey of uncovering the truth of a mysterious organization.
In the mid-1960s, Oedipa Maas lives a fairly comfortable life in the (fictional) northern Californian village of Kinneret, despite her lackluster marriage with Mucho Maas, a rudderless radio jockey , ... (Wikipedia)
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
by Tom Robbins
An eccentric story of freedom and adventure, exploring themes of identity, fate and love.
Sissy Hankshaw, the novel's protagonist , is a woman born with enormously large thumbs who considers her mutation a gift. , The novel covers various topics, including free love , feminism , drug use ... (Wikipedia)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
by Tom Stoppard
A humorous exploration of fate and free will, seen through the eyes of two minor characters in Shakespeare's "Hamlet".
Hamlet told from the worm's-eye view of two minor characters, bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, reality and illusion mix, and where fate leads heroes to a ... (Goodreads)
Without Feathers
by Woody Allen
Collection of humorous short stories, exploring the absurdities of life.
Here they are–some of the funniest tales and ruminations ever put into print, by one of the great comic minds of our time. From THE WHORE OF MENSA, to GOD (A Play), to NO KADDISH FOR WEINSTEIN, old ... (Goodreads)
Paper Dolls
by Brian K. Vaughan
A young girl's adventure to save her family from a mysterious force threatening their existence.
WINNER OF THREE EISNER AWARDS In addition to catching up on the adventures of Yorick's monkey Ampersand (whose body holds the key to stopping the male-killing plague) and telling the origin of Agent ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Salmon of Doubt
by Douglas Adams
A collection of essays, musings, and unfinished stories, exploring the human condition.
Douglas Adams changed the face of science fiction with his cosmically comic novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its classic sequels. Sadly for his countless admirers, he hitched his own ... (Goodreads)
The Aleph and Other Stories
by Jorge Luis Borges
A collection of stories featuring metaphysical and philosophical explorations of the human condition.
Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an ... (Goodreads)
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
by G.K. Chesterton
A man is recruited to a secret society, only to discover the sinister truth behind it.
In Edwardian-era London, Gabriel Syme is recruited at Scotland Yard to a secret anti- anarchist police corps. Lucian Gregory, an anarchistic poet, lives in the suburb of Saffron Park. Syme meets him ... (Wikipedia)
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe
A man finds himself stuck in a remote village, struggling to escape a mysterious sand pit.
In 1955, , Jumpei Niki, , a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a ... (Wikipedia)
Another Fine Myth
by Robert Lynn Asprin
A comedic fantasy adventure of a young mage and his quest to save the world.
Skeeve was a magician's apprentice–until an assassin struck and his master was killed. Now, with a purple-tongued demon named Aahz as a companion, he's on a quest to get even. ... (Goodreads)
The Clay Machine Gun
by Victor Pelevin
A surreal journey through post-Soviet Russia, blending Buddhist philosophy and Russian history. A satirical commentary on the human condition.
The novel is written as a first-person narrative of Pyotr Pustota (English: Pyotr Void ) and in the introduction to this book it is claimed that unlike Dmitriy Furmanov 's book Chapayev , this book ... (Wikipedia)
The Innocence of Father Brown
by G.K. Chesterton
Father Brown solves a series of mysterious crimes using his keen insight and intuition.
Chesterton portrays Father Brown as a short, stumpy Roman Catholic priest, with shapeless clothes and a large umbrella, and an uncanny insight into human evil. "How in Tartarus," cried Flambeau, "did ... (Goodreads)
The Woman Who Died a Lot
by Jasper Fforde
A humorous detective story set in a parallel universe, with eccentric characters and a mysterious plot.
The BookWorld's leading enforcement officer Thursday Next is four months into an enforced semi-retirement following an assassination attempt. She returns home to Swindon for what you'd expect to be a ... (Goodreads)
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
by Bobby Henderson
A satirical take on religion, presenting the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as an alternative to traditional beliefs.
Behold the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), today's fastest growing carbohydrate-based religion. According to church founder Bobby Henderson, the universe and all life within it were ... (Goodreads)
O Banqueiro Anarquista (com resumo e biografia do autor)
by Fernando Pessoa
EL BANQUERO ANARQUISTA Fernando Pessoa Traducción y prólogo de Jorge Gimeno ¿Es posible ser a la vez un rico y ladino banquero y un anarquista consumado que lucha por la liberación de la sociedad? ... (Barnes & Noble)
Fear and Trembling
by Søren Kierkegaard
Philosophical essay exploring the importance of faith, and the human struggle for faith.
Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and religious author interested in human psychology. He is regarded as a leading pioneer of existentialism and one of the greatest philosophers ... (Goodreads)
John Dies at the End
by David Wong
A bizarre supernatural adventure, blending horror and sci-fi elements.
John and Dave, two perpetual slackers and long-time friends, encounter strange phenomena in an undisclosed small city in the Midwestern United States and gain a reputation for dealing with paranormal ... (Wikipedia)
Just One Damned Thing After Another
by Jodi Taylor
A historian is accidentally sent back in time, embarking on a whirlwind adventure through history.
"History is just one damned thing after another." Behind the seemingly innocuous façade of St Mary's, a different kind of historical research is taking place. They don't do 'time-travel' - they ... (Goodreads)
Finnegans Wake
by James Joyce
A dream-like exploration of the subconscious, featuring wordplay, puns, and allusions.
A story with no real beginning or end (it ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence), this "book of Doublends Jined" is as remarkable for its prose as for its ... (Goodreads)
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
by Claire North
A man born again and again, living the same life with different outcomes.
Some stories cannot be told in just one lifetime. Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a ... (Goodreads)
Cronopios and Famas
by Julio Cortázar
A surrealist collection of short stories, exploring the absurdities of the world.
"The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions ... (Goodreads)
Mostly Harmless
by Douglas Adams
A humorous, intergalactic adventure as a hapless protagonist struggles with existential crisis.
Arthur Dent plans to sightsee across the Galaxy with his girlfriend Fenchurch , but she disappears during a hyperspace jump, a result of being from an unstable sector of the Galaxy. Depressed, Arthur ... (Wikipedia)
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
by Edwin A. Abbott
A two-dimensional world and its inhabitants explore the concept of multidimensionality.
The story describes a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures, whereof women are simple line-segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides. The narrator is a square , a ... (Wikipedia)
The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam
by Omar Khayyám
A collection of philosophical poetry exploring the human condition.
The rubaiyat are a series of poems or 'stanzas' by the famous 12th century Persian atronomer and philosopher The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Persian: رباعیات عمر خیام) is the title that Edward ... (Goodreads)
Timeline
by Michael Crichton
A group of scientists travelling through time to save their present.
In Corazon, Dan Baker and his wife are lost and driving through the Northern Arizona desert when they come across a man in his seventies who looks like a priest. They pull over to help him, then take ... (Wikipedia)
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
by Emily Dickinson
A tribute to the best of Dickinson's poetry, exploring the depths of her emotions and observations.
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson , by Emily Dickinson , is part of the, Barnes & Noble Classics, series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general ... (Barnes & Noble)
Death and the Penguin
by Andrey Kurkov
A Ukrainian journalist's surreal journey of self-discovery and moral soul-searching.
Viktor is an aspiring writer with only Misha, his pet penguin, for company. Although he would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. He longs to see ... (Goodreads)
Arcadia
by Iain Pears
A captivating story that weaves together the lives of people from different eras, exploring the nature of time, art, and love.
In Cold War England, Professor Henry Lytten, having renounced a career in espionage, is writing a fantasy novel that dares to imagine a world less fraught than his own. He finds an unlikely ... (Goodreads)
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 1: The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford
by Philip K. Dick
A collection of science fiction short stories exploring the nature of reality, identity, and the human condition.
Many thousands of readers consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in his works has continued to mount, and his reputation ... (Goodreads)
The Suicide Shop
by Jean Teulé
A family runs a shop that sells everything needed for a successful suicide. The youngest son, however, has a different outlook on life.
Has your life been a failure? Let's make your death a success With the twenty-first century just a distant memory and the world in environmental chaos, many people have lost the will to live. And ... (Goodreads)
Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
by Thomas Cathcart
A humorous exploration of philosophical concepts through jokes.
Here's a lively, hilarious, not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical traditions, schools, concepts, and thinkers. Its Philosophy 101 for everyone who knows not to take all this ... (Goodreads)
Olasılıksız
by Adam Fawer
A thrilling tale of survival and transformation, as a man discovers his true potential.
Improbable is the story of a gifted young man named David Caine, who has been troubled by debilitating epileptic seizures to the extent that his medical condition has thrown his life completely off ... (Wikipedia)
Await Your Reply
by Dan Chaon
Three characters, each with a mysterious past, search for identity and connection.
The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways and with unexpected consequences in acclaimed author Dan Chaon's gripping, brilliantly written new novel. Longing to get on with his life, ... (Goodreads)
Mist
by Miguel de Unamuno
A study of the power of faith and reason, exploring the depths of human existence.
The plot revolves around the character of Augusto, a wealthy, intellectual and introverted young man. He falls in love with a young woman named Eugenia as she walks past him on the street, and he ... (Wikipedia)
The Far Side Gallery 3
by Gary Larson
Collection of absurd, surreal and darkly humorous cartoons.
The third, Far Side, treasury. 1988 FarWorks, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Far Side and the Larson signature are registered trademarks of FarWorks, Inc. ... (Goodreads)
The Far Side
by Gary Larson
A collection of hilarious and absurd cartoons featuring animals, humans, and aliens in bizarre situations.
The Far Side was syndicated in more than 1,900 daily newspapers from 1980 to 1995, when Gary Larson retired. During its run, the cartoon spawned 22 books from AMP, which were translated into a total ... (Goodreads)
A Sound of Thunder
by Ray Bradbury
Time travelers go back to hunt dinosaurs, but one small mistake changes the course of history.
In the year 2055, time travel has become a practical reality, and the company Time Safari Inc. offers wealthy adventurers the chance to travel back in time to hunt extinct species such as dinosaurs. ... (Wikipedia)
All You Zombies
by Robert A. Heinlein
A time-traveling tale of a man who becomes his own mother and father, creating a paradoxical loop of identity.
" '—All You Zombies— ' " chronicles a young man (later revealed to be intersex ) taken back in time and tricked into impregnating his younger, female self (before he underwent sexual reassignment ... (Wikipedia)
The Monkey's Paw
by Diane Mowat
A cursed monkey's paw grants three wishes to a family, but at a terrible cost.
Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about ... (Goodreads)
Revenge
by Stephen Fry
A man seeks revenge after being betrayed by his friends and left for dead. A tale of obsession, manipulation, and the consequences of revenge.
In 1980, Ned (Edward) Maddstone is a seventeen-year-old student, the sort of person for whom everything goes right. He is head boy , talented at sports, and following in the footsteps of his father ... (Wikipedia)
A Universal History of Iniquity
by Jorge Luis Borges
A collection of short stories that explore the darker side of human nature, from pirates to con artists.
In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with a wicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (or making up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, and ... (Goodreads)
The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory
by Jorge Luis Borges
A surreal exploration of reality and the power of imagination.
The acclaimed translation of Borges's valedictory stories, in its first stand-alone edition, , Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of the twentieth century. Now ... (Barnes & Noble)
I Am a Strange Loop
by Douglas R. Hofstadter
A philosophical exploration of the concept of self and consciousness, arguing that the self is a product of the brain's self-referential processes.
What do we mean when we say “I”? Can thought arise out of matter? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an “I” arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange ... (Goodreads)
Flashforward
by Robert J. Sawyer
Humanity faces a dilemma when the entire population experiences a glimpse of the future.
Lloyd Simcoe, a 45-year-old Canadian particle physicist, oversees a run of the Large Hadron Collider . He works with his fiancée Michiko Kamura, who has a daughter, Tamiko. The experiment ... (Wikipedia)
God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
by Scott Adams
A delivery man meets an old man who challenges his beliefs about the nature of the universe and the role of God.
God's Debris is the first non-humor book by best-selling author Scott Adams. Adams describes God's Debris as a thought experiment wrapped in a story. It's designed to make your brain spin around ... (Goodreads)
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