Title: Heart of Darkness
Author: Joseph Conrad
Written: 1899
Pages: 188 pages
Structure: Three Chapters.
Heart of Darkness is a chilling story set in the Nineteenth Century about corruption and colonialism on the Congo River, told by Charles Marlow, the captain of a river steamboat. By the end of it, I wondered whether the darkness that Conrad spoke about throughout the novella was in our own hearts rather than in the dark jungles of the Congo.
Title: Mrs Dalloway
Author: Virginia Woolf
Written: 1925
Pages: 224
Structure: No chapters.
What does it feel it like to be a middle-aged woman in 1920’s London? Or a traumatised war veteran battling insanity? Or dissatisfied playboy who never really got over being rejected by the love of his life? Mrs Dalloway answers these questions in an intimate way, allowing us to dwell in the minds of different people for one day in June 1922, flitting from mind to mind like a telepathic butterfly.
It’s one of the most unusual novels I have read, and one of the most rewarding.
Title: Middlemarch. A Study of Provincial Life
Author: George Eliot
Written: 1872
Pages: 912
Structure: Prelude, 86 Chapters, Finale, in eight “Books”.
Middlemarch surprised me. It’s brilliantly clever: intimate, and vast at the same time. On the surface it is about life in a small provincial town in the English Midlands around 1830, but under the surface it explores the hopes, motivations and frustrations of people just like us. We can understand what drives each of the characters, even though we may disagree with them. The result feels more than a story, it is almost a detailed philosophy our own minds.
Title: The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Author: Thornton Wilder
Written: 1927
Pages: 255
Structure: Five Parts
In this beautiful novel, an Inca rope bridge collapses in Peru in 1714, killing five people. This leads the priest who witnessed the disaster to ask questions about the lives of the victims as he tries to come to terms with why God allowed these people to die.
Title: Northanger Abbey
Author: Jane Austen
Written: 1799
Published: 1818 (Posthumously)
Pages: 251
Structure: 31 Chapters in two volumes
Northanger Abbey is a delightful coming-of-age story about a young woman exploring the world of eighteenth-century England. Although it is both comical and satirical, I was surprised at how engaged I became with the heroine.
Title: The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince)
Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Written: 1943
Pages: 160
Structure: A novella with 27 Chapters
Is this a children’s book, or is it a masterfully written work of philosophy which challenges the way we observe the world? Either way you approach it, “The Little Prince” is a magical creation which has much to teach those who are either young, or young at heart.
Title: Cat’s Cradle
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Written: 1963
Pages: 306
Structure: A novel with 127 Chapters
Cat’s Cradle is a fascinating story about the end of the world, told with Kurt Vonnegut’s classic dry wit and gentle sarcasm.
Title: The Book of Two Ways
Author: Jodi Picoult
Written: 2020
Pages: 417
Structure: A novel in 15 Chapters plus notes and bibliography
What does it mean to live a good life? What is a good death? Is there only one true path for us to follow, or are there a variety of good decisions that we can make? “The Book of Two Ways” explores these ideas in the context of Egyptology, Quantum Mechanics, and tangled relationships.
Title: In Dreams and other stories
Author: Andrew Leggett
Written: 2026
Pages: 211
Structure: A novel in 24 chapters, plus seven short stories
Set in inner-city Brisbane, In Dreams is both beautiful and deeply unsettling. It combines lyrical poetry with scenes of shocking violence, all wrapped in an atmosphere of gathering dread.
Title: The Idiot (Идиот)
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Written: 1869
Translator: David McDuff (2004)
Pages: 732 Pages
Structure: 4 “Parts”, each consisting of up to sixteen chapters
Is it possible to live a perfectly good and innocent life in a hostile society? If you did, what sort of effect would you have on the world? How would it affect you?
In “The Idiot”, Fyodor Dostoyevsky asks these painful questions by placing a simple but good man in the midst of the worldly selfishness of nineteenth century Russia, and then examining the consequences of the ensuing conflict.
Title: Antigone
Author: Sophocles (circa 440 BCE)
Translator: Robert Fagles (1982)
Structure: A play consisting of 1,470 lines
Antigone is a powerful Greek tragedy about civil disobedience, and the abuse of political power. Although it is set during a civil war that occurred almost two and a half thousand years ago, it is as relevant today as it was then.
Title: Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus
Author: Mary Shelley (1797 – 1851)
Pages: 352
Structure: 24 Chapters
Frankenstein is where it all started. The mad scientist, the evil laugh on a stormy night, the experiment that went wrong, the man who dared to discover forbidden knowledge: these are all tropes that were born of the ingenious imagination of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
Title: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Author: Anonymous (circa 1370)
Translator: Simon Armitage (2007)
Pages: 198
Structure: 4 “Fitts”, 101 Stanzas, 2,530 lines
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a delightful fourteenth-century epic poem set in the time of King Arthur’s court and tells of the quest undertaken by a young knight in response to a challenge from a mysterious Green Knight.
Title: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Author: Robert A Heinlein (1907 – 1988)
Published: 1966
Pages: 408 Pages
Structure: 3 books, 30 chapters in total
How do you want to be governed? What would it take for you to join a revolution? What are you willing to die for… or kill for? The Moon is a Harsh Mistress asks all these questions in a strangely familiar but entertaining science-fiction setting.
Title: Slaughterhouse-Five
Author: Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007)
Published: 1969
Pages: 206 Pages
Structure: 10 chapters
“Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death” is a beautiful but strange satirical anti-war novel told from the perspective of a traumatised, time-travelling former prisoner of war.
Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Author: Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
Published: 1891
Pages: 214 Pages
Structure: 20 chapters
What if you could remain forever young, untouched by time and immune to the consequences of your actions? The Picture of Dorian Gray explores this unsettling possibility, revealing the terrible cost of a life lived without moral consequence, told with Oscar Wilde’s exquisite command of the English language.
Title: Wuthering Heights
Author: Emily Brontë (1818 – 1848)
Published: 1847
Pages: 416 Pages
Structure: 34 chapters
Wuthering Heights is a turbulent novel that left me feeling like I had weathered a tempest of passion and revenge. At numerous times throughout this powerful book I felt anger and exasperation at the cruelty of the characters.
Title: War and Peace
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Published: 1869
Pages: 1,440 Pages
Translator: Anthony Briggs (2005)
Structure: 4 “volumes”, each split into up to 5 “parts”, each split into up to 30 chapters.
“War and Peace” is a rich and vast work of literature set during the Napoleonic Wars that gives an intimate insight into the upheaval caused by military conflict. For me it was a vivid multi-level experience that explored nations, families and individuals as they struggle for survival and search for meaning. Tolstoy refused to call it a novel, or a poem, or even a chronicle of history.
Title: The Revolt of the Angels
Author: Anatole France
Written: 1914
Translator: Emillie Jackson (1924)
Pages: 156
Structure: 35 chapters.
This fascinating novel is a modern retelling of the classic christian “War in Heaven” myth, set in 1914 Paris. It follows a guardian angel, Arcade, who after discovering a love for reading books about Theology and History, comes to the realization that the god in heaven that he has been serving since before time is actually a malevolent impostor.
Title: The Prince (Il Principe)
Author: Niccolò Machiavelli
Written: 1513
Translator: Tim Parks, 2009
Pages: 124
Structure: 26 chapters.
Fifteenth Century Italy was a turbulent place. After a life of exemplary diplomatic service, Niccolò Machiavelli found himself imprisoned, tortured, and on the verge of ruin following a change of political leadership in his country.
This book is an instruction manual that Machiavelli sent to the new leader, explaining how to gain political power, what was necessary to hang on to it, and how not to be a victim of circumstance. In a way, Machiavelli was saying “I have experience, I can be useful. Here is proof. Spare a kind thought for me.”
