Invisible Man is Ralph Ellison's first novel, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early 20th century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.
Kate Vaiden (1986) is the 6th novel by American author Reynolds Price. The novel focuses on the life of a white woman from the American South who, after a teenage pregnancy, abandons her son shortly after giving birth to him and who does not get in touch with him for four decades.
Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet who explored death, social injustice, and human misery in controversial literature that was deeply pessimistic about modern civilization in general and Austrian culture in particular. Bernhard's body of work has been called "the most significant literary achievement since World War II." He is widely considered to be one of the most important German-language authors of the postwar era.
Hey Nostradamus! is a novel by Douglas Coupland centred on a fictional 1988 school shooting in suburban Vancouver, British Columbia and its aftermath. This is Coupland's most critically acclaimed novel. It was first published by Random House of Canada in 2003. The novel comprises four first-person narratives, each from the perspective of a character directly or indirectly affected by the shooting. The novel intertwines substantial themes, including adolescent love, sex, religion, prayer and grief.
Molly Bloom is a fictional character in the 1922 novel Ulysses by James Joyce. The wife of main character Leopold Bloom, she roughly corresponds to Penelope in the Odyssey. The major difference between Molly and Penelope is that while Penelope is eternally faithful, Molly is not. Molly is having an affair with Hugh 'Blazes' Boylan. Molly, whose given name is Marion, was born in Gibraltar on 8 September 1870, the daughter of Major Tweedy, an Irish military officer, and Lunita Laredo, a Gibraltarian of Spanish descent. Molly and Leopold were married on 8 October 1888. She is the mother of Milly Bloom, who, at the age of 15, has left home to study photography. She is also the mother of Rudy Bloom, who died at the age of 11 days. In Dublin, Molly is an opera singer of some renown.
"The Vane Sisters" is a short story by Vladimir Nabokov, written in March 1951. It is famous for providing one of the most extreme examples of an unreliable narrator. It was first published in the Winter 1958 issue of The Hudson Review and then reprinted in Encounter during 1959. The story was included in Nabokov's Quartet (1966), Nabokov's Congeries, Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (1975), and The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1995).
The Reader is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink, published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States in 1997. The story is a parable, dealing with the difficulties post-war German generations have had comprehending the Holocaust; Ruth Franklin writes that it was aimed specifically at the generation Bertolt Brecht called the Nachgeborenen, those who came after. Like other novels in the genre of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the struggle to come to terms with the past, The Reader explores how the post-war generations should approach the generation that took part in, or witnessed, the atrocities. These are the questions at the heart of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses die and living memory fades.
Nadja (1928), the second book published by André Breton, is one of the iconic works of the French surrealist movement. It begins with the question "Who am I?"
My Uncle Napoleon is a coming of age novel by Iranian author Iraj Pezeshkzad published in Tehran in Persian in 1973. The novel was adapted as a TV series in 1976, directed by Nasser Taghvai. Though the book and the TV series were briefly banned following the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran, it remained popular. It is noted for its lampooning of the common social attitudes and beliefs in Iran during the period of Allied occupation of Iran. The novel has been translated by Dick Davis into English.
Correction is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in German in 1975, and first published in English translation in 1979 by Alfred A. Knopf.
The Loser is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in German in 1983.
Woodcutters is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, originally published in German in 1984. A roman à clef, its subject is the theatre and it forms the second part of a trilogy, between The Loser (1983) and Old Masters (1985) which deal with music and painting respectively. Its publication created an uproar in Austria, where it became a bestseller before a defamation lawsuit by the composer Gerhard Lampersberg resulted in a court order to pulp the remaining copies; Lampersberg, a former friend of Bernhard's and the model for the character Auersberger, subsequently dropped the suit.
The Lime Works is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, first published in German in 1970. It is a complex surrealist work, where the creativity and resourcefulness of a destructive personality is marshalled against itself in a nightmarish narration.
Extinction is the last of Thomas Bernhard’s novels. It was originally published in German in 1986.
On the Mountain is Thomas Bernhard’s first prose work, which he completed in 1959, yet the last of his works to be published, in 1989, the year of his death.
Dreams of My Russian Summers is a French novel by Andrei Makine, originally published in 1995. It won two top French awards, the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis. The novel is told from the first-person perspective and tells the fictional story of a boy's memories and experiences with his French grandmother in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and '70s.
The Nature of a Crime is a collaborative novel written and published in 1909 by authors Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. The text did not acquire acclaim until after Conrad's death in 1924, when Ford brought the text to light in his essay "Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance". The Nature of a Crime is the last of three books written by Conrad and Ford.
All My Puny Sorrows is the sixth novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. The novel won the 2014 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2015 Folio Prize for Literature, and the 2015 Wellcome Book Prize. Toews has said that the novel draws heavily on the events leading up to the 2010 suicide of her sister, Marjorie.
The Mixture as Before is a collection of 10 short stories by the British writer W. Somerset Maugham, first published by William Heinemann in 1940.
The Friend is a novel by the American writer Sigrid Nunez published by Riverhead Books in 2018. The book concerns an unnamed novelist who adopts a Great Dane that belonged to a deceased friend and mentor.
