Having read a bumber of reveiws on this topic and finding very few books I could relate to, I had to come up with this (well) ranking. By a wonderful stroke of chance and a dear friend or two, some truly outstanding works of literary genius have been held by my hands...yes and read too.
So here goes nothing ... meant for those who share just that with me.... comprising of works that managed to turn ’’nothing’’ inside out...and managed to suggest everything with no more than words.
Not in any order.
*I The Trial - Franz Kafka..
*One of the most disturbing books I have ever read. One must marvel and yet only guess at that special art of the author’s which while eluding all definition manages to reproduce the oddities of ’’normal life’’ with abnormalities which are just as believable. A man wakes up to find he is being arrested(?) for a crime he does not know off.....read on
*II Brave New World - Aldous Huxley*
A vision of dystopia, as appealing to the celebrated sense of rationality as to sheer literary content. An incredible mind at work, with a near perfect ending, given that its dystopia after all. An alternate world based on notions present in our reality...and what may go wrong....solutions?
*III Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
*Due to thanks to my friend for telling me such a book existed. Gripping, intelligent with enough to think on no matter what your leanings...left right..don’t care!... Rubashov gets arrested by his own party, as part of a process he knows well, believed... perhaps all too well.
*IV Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dosteovsky
*Had I the vanity to speak on a book such as this I would surely be a fool. The point being ...read this. May just reassure your faith in the existence of genius. Raskolnikov , broke, contemplates murder, with all the emotions of daily life which could perchance be the stuff of an epic.
*V Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dosteovsky*
The man one is taight in schools never to be... the image of failure we are so scared of and never consider as our fate....that man finds a voice....and perhaps absolves us all?
Let me warn you...do not read any of these for mere entertainment...the book shall surely be a disappointment.