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1) ULYSSES by James Joyce
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About this book:
Ulysses takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, also known as Bloomsday, it sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublin and represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, and contrasts them with their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city. In Ulysses, Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and virtually every other literary technique to present his characters. Many consider it the best novel of the twentieth century. It is powerfully written, a book for the ages.
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2) THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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About this book:
Self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby epitomizes the decadence of the 1920s Jazz Age in this tale of mobility and decline told with detached curiosity by his neighbor and confidant Nick Carraway. As Harold Bloom suggests, in his introduction to this new edition of full-length critical essays on the work, the novel transcends its own time period in the ways it addresses classic American themes of identity and success.
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3) A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
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About this book:
As Joyce describes the sometimes terrifying Dublin upbringing of his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, he immerses the reader in his emerging consciousness, employing language that evolves from baby talk to hellfire sermon to a triumphant artist's manifesto.As Joyce describes the sometimes terrifying Dublin upbringing of his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, he immerses the reader in his emerging consciousness, employing language that evolves from baby talk to hellfire sermon to a triumphant artist's manifesto.
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4) LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
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About this book:
When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. Awe and exhilaration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
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5) CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
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About this book:
Catch-22 is like no other novel we have ever read. It has its own style, its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original.It is set in the closing months of World War II, in an American bomber squadron on a small island off Italy. Its hero is a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him. (He has decided to live forever even if he has to die in the attempt.)Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane. It is a novel that lives and moves and grows with astonishing power and vitality. It is, we believe, one of the strongest creations of the mid-century.
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6) DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
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About this book:
Darkness At Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he re-lives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Almost unbearably vivid in its depiction of one man's solitary agony, Darkness At Noon asks questions about ends and means that have relevance not only for the past but for the perilous present.
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7) SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
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About this book:
The story of a young man, raised by a weak, alcoholic father & a strong, loving mother, who finds himself, in his search for a soul mate, torn between two very different women. A brilliant, painstaking character study with strong autobiographical overtones.
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8) THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy
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About this book:
With this stark postapocalyptic novel, the author of No Country for Old Men takes a radical leap. Two characters, "Papa" and an unnamed son, scavenge desperately for food in the aftermath of a fiery catastrophe that has reduced their world to a smoldering wasteland of ash. Against this desolate backdrop, the pair manage to nurture a relationship and a modicum of ethical decency. Indeed, their closeness in the midst of horror transforms this grim story of survival into something almost uplifting. An ambitious, totally unforgettable novel of pilgrimage.
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9) UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
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About this book:
On a single, fateful day in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, 1938, a former British consul wrestles with his demons as his wife tries to rescue their marriage from his drinking problem.On the Day of the Dead, in 1938, Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic and ruined man, is fatefully living out his last day, drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him. The events of this one day unfold against a backdrop unforgettable for its evocation of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.
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10) TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
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About this book:
Virginia Woolf is one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, and To the Lighthouse is perhaps her crowning achievement.Virginia Woolf is one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, and To the Lighthouse is perhaps her crowning achievement. The novel is one of Woolf's most successful and accessible experiments in the stream-of-consciousness style. The three sections of the book take place between 1910 and 1920 and revolve around various members of the Ramsay family during visits to their summer residence on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. A central motif of the novel is the conflict between the feminine and masculine principles at work in the universe.
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11) THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
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About this book:
Published in 1940, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is considered McCullers' finest work. The focus of the work is on John Singer, a deaf-mute in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s, and on his effect on the people who confide in him. When Singer's mute Greek companion of 10 years goes insane, Singer is left alone and isolated. He takes a room with the Kelly family, where he is visited by the town's misfits, who turn to him for understanding but have no knowledge of his inner life. The book's emphasis on individuals who are considered outcasts because of race, politics, disability, or sensibility placed it squarely within the Southern gothic tradition of American literature.
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12) THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
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About this book:
A brilliant profile of the Lost Generation, Hemingway's first bestseller captures life among the expatriates on Paris's Left Bank during the 1920s, the brutality of bullfighting in Spain, and the moral and spiritual dissolution of a generation. The winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature, Ernest Hemingway is one of the true giants of modern American literature. Hemingway's punchy, pared-down style and ability to zero in on the perfect characterizing detail of a person or scene has influenced every serious novelist of the second half of the 20th century. Everyone reads him at one time or another.
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13) WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
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About this book:
Turning his keen eye on the nature of love, commitment, passion, & marriage, Lawrence gives us the stories of two intelligent, incisive, & observant sisters, whose temperamental differences spark an ongoing debate regarding their society & their inner lives.
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14) LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
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About this book:
Classic YA novel about the struggles of a group of British schoolboys stranded on a desert island.
14.5 Million copies sold to date The classic, startling, and perennially bestselling portrait of human nature.
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