Books
The Book of Dave is a 2006 novel by English author Will Self . [ edit ] Content The Book of Dave tells the story of an angry and mentally ill London taxi driver named Dave Rudman, who writes and has printed on metal a book of his rantings against women and thoughts on custody rights for fathers. These stem from his anger with his ex-wife, Michelle, who he believes is unfairly keeping him from his son. Equally influential in Dave's book is The Knowledge —the intimate familiarity with the city of London required of its cabbies. Dave buries the book, which is discovered centuries later and used as the sacred text for a dogmatic, cruel, and misogynistic religion that takes hold in the remnants of southern England and London following catastrophic flooding.
The Book of Dave
The Yearling is a 1938 novel written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings . It was published in March 1938. [ 1 ] It was the main selection of the Book of the Month Club in April 1938. It was the number one best seller for twenty-three consecutive weeks in 1938. [ 2 ] As well as being the best-selling novel in America in 1938 it was the seventh best in 1939. It sold over 250,000 copies in 1938. [ 3 ] It has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, French, Japanese, German, Italian, Russian and twenty-two other languages. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1939. Rawlings's editor was Maxwell Perkins , who also worked with F.
The Yearling
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage ( 1915 ) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham . It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." [ 1 ] Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes , finally settled on a title taken from a section of Spinoza 's Ethics . [ 2 ] The Modern Library ranked Of Human Bondage #66 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century . [ edit ] Plot The book begins with the death of Helen Carey, the mother of nine-year-old Philip Carey. Philip's father Henry had died a few months before, and the orphan Philip, born with a club foot , is sent to live with his Aunt Louisa and Uncle William Carey.
Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon ( German : Sonnenfinsternis ) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler , first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government which he had helped to create. Set in 1938 during the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials , the novel does not name either Russia or the USSR ; the characters have Russian names. Joseph Stalin is alluded to as "Number One", a menacing dictator. The novel expresses the author's disillusionment with the Soviet Union's practice of Communism.
Modern Library's 100 Best Novels is a list of the best English-language novels [ 1 ] of the 20th century as selected by the Modern Library , an American publishing company owned by Random House . In early 1998, the Modern Library polled its editorial board to find the best 100 novels of the 20th century. The board consisted of Daniel J. Boorstin , A.
Modern Library 100 Best Novels
The Kite Runner
The Kite Runner is a novel by Khaled Hosseini . Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books , it is Hosseini's first novel, [ 1 ] and was adapted into a film of the same name in 2007. The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul , whose closest friend is Hassan, his father's young Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of Afghanistan's monarchy through the Soviet military intervention , the exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States , and the rise of the Taliban regime.
Cyberpunk derivatives
A number of cyberpunk derivatives have become recognized as distinct subgenres in speculative fiction . These derivatives, though they do not share cyberpunk 's computers-focused setting, may display other qualities drawn from or analogous to cyberpunk: a world built on one particular technology that is extrapolated to a highly sophisticated level (this may even be a fantastical or anachronistic technology, akin to retro-futurism ), a gritty transreal urban style, or a particular approach to social themes. Many, but not all, of these subgenres have the suffix - punk in their names, having been added in a continuing play on the habit of creating portmanteau words as in the cyber / steam -punk naming convention. [ edit ] Cyberpunk
In literary criticism , a Bildungsroman ( German pronunciation: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.ʁoˌmaːn] ; German : "formation novel" ) [ 1 ] or novel of formation , also coming-of-age story is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood ( coming of age ), [ 2 ] and in which character change is thus extremely important. [ 3 ] [ edit ] History The term was coined in 1819 by philologist Karl Morgenstern in his university lectures, and later famously reprised by Wilhelm Dilthey , who legitimized it in 1870 and popularized it in 1905. [ 1 ] [ 4 ] The genre is further characterized by a number of formal, topical, and thematic features. [ 5 ] The term coming-of-age novel is sometimes used interchangeably with Bildungsroman , but its use is usually wider and less technical.
Bildungsroman
Fatherland (novel)
Fatherland is a bestselling 1992 thriller by the English writer and journalist Robert Harris . It takes the form of a detective story in an alternative history in which Nazi Germany won World War II . The novel was an immediate bestseller in the UK.
V for Vendetta is a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd , set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s to about the 1990s. A mysterious masked revolutionary who calls himself "V" works to destroy the totalitarian government, profoundly affecting the people he encounters. Warner Bros. released a film adaptation of V for Vendetta in 2005. The story depicts a near-future U.K. after a nuclear war , which has left much of the world destroyed, though most of the damage to the country is indirect, via floods and crop failures. In this future, a fascist party called Norsefire has exterminated its opponents in concentration camps and now rules the country as a police state . V, an anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask , begins an elaborate, violent, and intentionally theatrical campaign to murder his former captors, bring down the government, and convince the people to rule themselves.
V for Vendetta
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (called The Android Cried Me a River in VALIS ) is a 1974 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick . The story follows a genetically enhanced pop singer and television star who wakes up in a world where he has never existed. The novel is set in a futuristic dystopia , where the United States has become a police state in the aftermath of a Second Civil War. It was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1974, [ 1 ] a Hugo Award in 1975, [ 2 ] and was awarded the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1975. [ 2 ] [ 3 ]
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
The Chrysalids ( US title: Re-Birth ) is a science fiction novel by John Wyndham , first published in 1955 by Michael Joseph . It is the least typical of Wyndham's major novels, but regarded by some as his best. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] An early manuscript was entitled Time for a Change . [ 3 ] The novel was adapted for BBC radio by Barbara Clegg in 1982, [ 4 ] with a further adaptation by Jane Rogers in 2012. [ 5 ] It was also adapted for the theatre by playwright David Harrower in 1999. [ 6 ] [ edit ] Plot summary A few thousand years in the future, post-apocalypse rural Labrador has become a warmer and more hospitable place than it is at present. The inhabitants of Labrador have vague historical recollections of the "Old People", a technologically advanced civilization which existed long ago and which they believe was destroyed when God sent " Tribulation " to the world to punish their forebears' sins.
The Chrysalids
Anthem (novella)
Anthem is a dystopian fiction novella by Ayn Rand , written in 1937 and first published in 1938 in England. It takes place at some unspecified future date when mankind has entered another dark age characterized by irrationality, collectivism , and socialistic thinking and economics . Technological advancement is now carefully planned (when it is allowed to occur at all) and the concept of individuality has been eliminated (for example, the use of the word "I" is punishable by death ). [ edit ] CharactersThe Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow a watchman to observe ( -opticon ) all ( pan- ) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. The design consists of a circular structure with an "inspection house" at its centre, from which the managers or staff of the institution are able to watch the inmates, who are stationed around the perimeter.