Here's your literature guide to understanding life better.
1. To understand the human condition
- The Brothers Karamazov
- Middlemarch
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich
2. To understand existentialism
- The Stranger
- Nausea
- Notes from Underground
3. To understand the human mind
- Mrs Dalloway
- Crime and Punishment
- The Bell Jar
4. To understand society and power
- 1984
- Brave New World
- The Handmaid's Tale
5. To understand love and relationships
- Pride and Prejudice
- Anna Karenina
- Love in the Time of Cholera
6. To understand alienation and absurdity
- The Metamorphosis
- The Plague
- No Longer Human
7. To understand identity and freedom
- The Second Sex
- Orlando
- Demian
Which category would you add to?
Dostoevsky for the existential crisis. Kafka for the absurdity. Woolf for the inner world. Camus for the questions. Orwell for the warnings. Tolstoy for the human condition. All for understanding life through fiction.
You can bring only 3 authors back to life for one conversation. Who are you choosing?
1. Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. George Orwell
3. Franz Kafka
4. Virginia Woolf
5. Albert Camus
6. Leo Tolstoy
7. Jane Austen
8. Friedrich Nietzsche
BOOKS THAT EVERYONE SHOULD EXPERIENCE AT LEAST ONCE:
- 1984 — George Orwell
- The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka
- The Stranger — Albert Camus
- To the Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf
- The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde
Not because everyone will love them, but because each offers a different way of looking at being human.
What would you add?