Ocean Vuong returns with a big-hearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker.

Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and religious author interested in human psychology. He is regarded as a leading pioneer of existentialism and one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th Century.

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard, writing under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio, wanted to understand the anxiety that must have been present in Abraham when God commanded him to offer his son as a human sacrifice. Abraham had a choice to complete the task or to forget it. He resigned himself to the loss of his son, acting according to his faith. In other words, one must be willing to give up all his or her earthly possessions in infinite resignation and must also be willing to give up whatever it is that he or she loves more than God.

Abraham had passed the test -- his love for God proved greater than anything else in him. And because a good and just Creator would not want a father to kill his son, God intervened at the last moment to prevent the sacrifice.

From New Yorker and Paris Review contributor and Wallace Stegner Fellow Zach Williams comes a staggering debut story collection that confronts parenthood, mortality, and life's broken promises.

Parents awaken in a home in the woods, again and again, to find themselves aging as their infant remains unchanged. An employee is menaced by a conspiracy-minded security guard and accused of sending a sinister viral email. An aging tour guide leads a troublesome group to the site of a UFO, witnessing the slow social deterioration as the rules of decorum go out the window.

In each of Williams' ten stories, time is as fallible as the characters, and reality is witnessed through the gauzy folds of a dream—or a nightmare. Bucolic scenes devolve into harrowing exercises in abandonment; the quotidian nature of office life raises serious questions of existential fortitude.

Williams is keenly aware of the insidiousness lurking in the shadows of the everyday, ably spiking it with humor. He depicts the divided self of the parent, the distances necessary to protect our children, and the fallout of our deepest relationships. Williams sees the perversity in the mundane and dares readers to recognize the impact—and beauty—of time's relentless movement.

With exquisite prose and a lacerating wit, Beautiful Days holds a mirror to the many absurdities of being human and refuses to let us look away.

Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This in a debut that follows two twenty-something siblings-turned-roommates navigating an absurd world about to suffer great change—a Seinfeldian novel of existentialism and sisterhood. It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely.

Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen. Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls’ mother—a newly devout Messianic Jew—starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies.

A trip home to Florida ends in disaster. Amy Klobuchar may or may not have rabies. And Jules struggles halfheartedly to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly coming to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, permanent fixtures in each other’s lives—must ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.

Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.

This Plague of Souls marks the return of Mike McCormack, the Booker-listed author of the literary sensation Solar Bones. In this terse metaphysical thriller, we follow the story of Nealon, a man stepping back into the world after a stint in prison, only to find his home devoid of warmth, light, and the presence of his family. As if existence itself has chosen to ignore or erase him, Nealon is left to grapple with the void.

However, mysterious calls from a stranger claiming to know the fate of his missing loved ones set Nealon on a path of discovery. A meeting is arranged against the backdrop of a looming terrorist attack, where Nealon engages in a conversation riddled with hidden truths and deliberate omissions. This verbal chess match takes him on a journey through his past, his childhood, and into the heart of international crimes committed in the name of revenge against a world deemed beyond redemption.

McCormack weaves a brooding exploration of the ties that bind rural Ireland to the atrocities of the 21st century. This narrative offers a sharp portrayal of a young family's struggle and a relentless probe into our responsibilities towards our kin and the wider world.

Tremor, a novel by award-winning author Teju Cole, is a profound exploration of the essence of a meaningful existence within the context of a world marred by violence. The story invites readers to delve into the life of Tunde, a West African man who teaches photography at a prestigious New England campus. Tunde, an avid reader, listener, and traveler, navigates through a tapestry of narratives—ranging from historical epics, personal anecdotes, to tales he encounters in literature and cinema.

Through Tunde's perspective, we experience a series of events that shape his daily life. From a weekend marred by the shadows of colonial atrocities to an evening walk disrupted by casual racism, and the intricate dynamics of a loving marriage, the novel presents a diverse spectrum of experiences. These stories, collectively, form the days that constitute Tunde's life and, in turn, create a composite of what it means to live.

Tremor is an arresting fusion of realism and creativity, engaging with themes of literature, music, race, and history. It scrutinizes the passage of time and the various ways we commemorate it. The novel confronts the harshness of history, which often lacks symmetry and comfort, yet it also stands as a testament to the enduring potential of happiness. Echoing the narrative prowess showcased in his debut, Open City, Teju Cole presents a narration that is fully aware, striking, and crucial to the contemporary literary scene.

Mirar con las palabras, con los nervios, los latidos, contemplar el cielo con el asombro del verso contenido, encender la hierba y los insectos, saber del aroma y del recuerdo. Ventanas ofrece una contemplación al paisaje y también a las emociones, a los deseos y la inquietud existencial. Gracias a los cristales de esta poesía podemos asumir el instante de la germinación, el trasunto de las nubes pensativas o sentir la vibración de las moléculas, las células en su afán metafísico de construir.

Pero Ventanas va más allá del asombro de la observación es una apuesta por el lenguaje y el verso dilatado, por los senderos de la métrica y los espacios de la hoja para labrar una sombra, dibujar un astro o iluminar el acto amoroso, los poemas nos permiten asomarnos a la vida retratada y a la reflexión del tiempo disfrazado de lluvia, de flores indolentes, de tersura en el campo de voces, árboles y sonidos.

Being & Nothingness is without doubt one of the most significant philosophical books of the 20th century. This central work by one of the century's most influential thinkers, Jean-Paul Sartre, altered the course of western philosophy. Its revolutionary approach challenged all previous assumptions about the individual's relationship with the world.

Known as 'the Bible of existentialism', its impact on culture and literature was immediate and was felt worldwide, from the absurdist drama of Samuel Beckett to the soul-searching cries of the Beat poets. Being & Nothingness is one of those rare books whose influence has affected the mindset of subsequent generations.

Seventy years after its first publication, its message remains as potent as ever—challenging readers to confront the fundamental dilemmas of human freedom, choice, responsibility, and action.

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder, woven together in a wondrous debut by NPR reporter Lulu Miller.

David Starr Jordan, a taxonomist driven to bring order to the natural world, was on the verge of discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. However, the universe seemed determined to challenge him, as his specimen collections were destroyed by a series of calamities, culminating in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. His life's work in ruins, Jordan stood amidst the wreckage and, spotting the first fish he recognized, began the arduous task of rebuilding his collection. This time, he introduced an innovation to protect his work from chaos.

Lulu Miller's encounter with Jordan's story led her to question her own understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet. Why Fish Don't Exist is not only a biography and a memoir but also a scientific adventure that reads like a fable, offering an inspiring reflection on how to persevere in a world where chaos always seems to prevail.

The Wall, the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor—seemingly there for the men's solace—their mental descent is charted in exquisite, often harrowing detail. And as the morning draws inexorably closer, the men cross the psychological wall between life and death, long before the first shot rings out.

This brilliant snapshot of life in anguish is the perfect introduction to a collection of stories where the neurosis of the modern world is mirrored in the lives of the people that inhabit it.

Existentialism Is a Humanism was written to correct common misconceptions about Jean-Paul Sartre's thought. Sartre, the most dominant European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture was to expound his philosophy as a form of existentialism, a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience.

The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence”). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind.

This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s The Stranger, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture.

Centuries after the last humans left Earth, the Exodus Fleet is a living relic, a place many are from but few outsiders have seen. Humanity has finally been accepted into the galactic community, but while this has opened doors for many, those who have not yet left for alien cities fear that their carefully cultivated way of life is under threat.

Tessa chose to stay home when her brother Ashby left for the stars, but has to question that decision when her position in the Fleet is threatened. Kip, a reluctant young apprentice, itches for change but doesn't know where to find it. Sawyer, a lost and lonely newcomer, is just looking for a place to belong. When a disaster rocks this already fragile community, those Exodans who still call the Fleet their home can no longer avoid the inescapable question: What is the purpose of a ship that has reached its destination?

The Ego and Its Own is an 1844 work by Max Stirner. It presents a radically nominalist and individualist critique of Christianity, nationalism, and traditional morality, as well as humanism, utilitarianism, liberalism, and much of the then-burgeoning socialist movement. Stirner advocates for an amoral (though not inherently immoral or antisocial) egoism.

Ego emphasizes owness as self-description, moving past fixed conceptions of the Self and Other through the recognition of power relations and self-discovery of the mind.

Johann Kaspar Schmidt (1806-1856), also known as Max Stirner, was a German philosopher who is often considered one of the pioneers in anarchism, nihilism, existentialism, and postmodernism. His ideas challenge the enslavement of the mind by religion and nationalism, advocating for individual freedom and autonomy.

Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology, and horoscope. When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague."

Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

Tehlikeli Oyunlar is a striking and jarring novel that calls upon the individual to perceive the struggle and triumph over one's self as a vital issue. The main character, Hikmet Benol, delves into the underlying realities of the intense turmoil in society. He senses that genuinely engaging with these truths is seen as dangerous by those in power.

As a result, Hikmet explores ways to engage with life as if playing a game. He embarks on a journey filled with both danger and play, pushing himself to the limits of where this path can lead.

Before the asteroid, we let ourselves be defined by labels: The athlete, the outcast, the slacker, the overachiever. But then we all looked up and everything changed.

They said it would be here in two months. That gave us two months to leave our labels behind. Two months to become something bigger than what we'd been, something that would last even after the end. Two months to really live.

The lives of four high school seniors intersect weeks before a meteor is set to pass through Earth's orbit, with a 66.6% chance of striking and destroying all life on the planet.

John Barth's lively and highly original collection of short pieces is a major landmark of experimental fiction. Though many of the stories gathered here were published separately, there are several themes common to them all, giving them new meaning in the context of this collection.

From its opening story, "Frame-Tale"—printed sideways and designed to be cut out by the reader and twisted into a never-ending Möbius strip—to the much-anthologized "Life-Story," whose details are left to the reader to "fill in the blank," Barth's acclaimed collection challenges our ideas of what fiction can do.

Highlights include the Homerian story-within-a-story-within-a-story (times seven) of "Menalaiad," and "Night-Sea Journey," a first-person account of a confused human sperm on its way to fertilize an egg. All of the characters in Lost in the Funhouse are searching, in one way or another, for their purpose and the meaning of their existence.

Together, their stories form a kaleidoscope of exuberant metafictional inventiveness.

The Myth of Sisyphus is a profound and moving philosophical statement by Albert Camus. In this work, Camus poses the fundamental question: Is life worth living?

If human existence holds no significance, what can keep us from suicide? As Camus argues, if there is no God to give meaning to our lives, humans must take on that purpose themselves. This is our "absurd" task, like Sisyphus forever rolling his rock up a hill, as the inevitability of death constantly overshadows us.

Written during the bleakest days of the Second World War, The Myth of Sisyphus argues for an acceptance of reality that encompasses revolt, passion, and, above all, liberty. This volume contains several other essays, including lyrical evocations of the sunlit cities of Algiers and Oran, the settings of his great novels The Outsider and The Plague.

Camus' writings are hymns to the physical world and the elemental pleasures of living, encouraging us to embrace life even in the face of its absurdity.

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

When Pierre-Anthon realizes there is no meaning to life, the seventh-grader leaves his classroom, climbs a tree, and stays there. His classmates cannot make him come down, not even by pelting him with rocks. So to prove to Pierre-Anthon that life has meaning, the children decide to give up things of importance. The pile starts with the superficial—a fishing rod, a new pair of shoes. But as the sacrifices become more extreme, the students grow increasingly desperate to get Pierre-Anthon down, to justify their belief in meaning.

Sure to prompt intense thought and discussion, Nothing—already a treasured work overseas—is not to be missed.

The Dream Of A Ridiculous Man is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky written in 1877. It begins with a man walking the streets of St. Petersburg while musing upon how ridiculous his life is, as well as its distinct lack of meaning or purpose. This train of thought leads him to the idea of suicide, which he resolves to commit using a previously-acquired gun. However, a chance encounter with a distressed little girl in the street derails his drastic plans.

All My Friends Are Dead is both the saddest funny book and the funniest sad book you'll ever read. This amusing and captivating tale is a delightful primer for laughing at the inevitable.

If you're a dinosaur, all of your friends are dead. If you're a pirate, all of your friends have scurvy. If you're a tree, all of your friends are end tables. Each page of this laugh-out-loud, illustrated humor book showcases the downside of being everything from a clown to a cassette tape to a zombie. Cute and dark all at once, this hilarious children's book for adults teaches valuable lessons about life.

From the sock whose only friends have gone missing to the houseplant whose friends are being slowly killed by irresponsible plant owners (like you), All My Friends Are Dead presents hilariously entertaining stories about life and existential predicaments.

The simple yet effective imagery, the personification of inanimate objects, and short, hilarious quips come together to create an amusing adventure through each character's unique grievance and wide-eyed dilemmas.

Written by Avery Monsen, an actor, artist, and writer, and Jory John, a writer, editor, and journalist. They are friends, and neither is dead. Yet.

The Metamorphosis is a novella written by Franz Kafka, which was first published in 1915. It tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition.

The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, with differing interpretations being offered. The text was first published in the October issue of the journal Die weißen Blätter under the editorship of René Schickele. The first edition in book form appeared in December 1915 in the series Der jüngste Tag, edited by Kurt Wolff.

With a length of about 70 printed pages over three chapters, it is the longest of the stories Kafka considered complete and published during his lifetime. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.

Min kamp 1 opens with a dizzying description of death. From there, it tells the story of author Karl Ove Knausgård's struggle to master life, himself, and his own ambitions for writing, as he interacts with the people around him.

The novel explores the experience of growing up and being thrust into a world that seems complete, finished, and closed. It captures the sensitivity and uncertainty of a young perspective, observing the presence and judgments of others with an openness that is both overwhelming and almost self-destructive in its consequence.

In a probing prose that seeks out the vulnerable, the embarrassing, and the existentially significant, this becomes a deeply personal novel, self-examining and controversial. An existential focal point is the death of the father, while another might be the protagonist's debut as a writer.

An ant has two stomachs. I know this because my neighbor told me; and to my knowledge, he never lied to me. It's fascinating how a person's attitude and feelings about someone, about life in general, can change so much in such a short time.

Two months ago I hardly knew the meaning of the word 'time'. Another thing I learned from him: how to view everything from varying objective perspectives; especially with respect to time. If I had it to do over again, I'd have been more inquisitive.

My wife Gwen accuses me of asking too many questions, but with him, I couldn't have asked enough. He knew everything. Is it possible to ask someone who knows everything too many questions? But I did ask a lot of questions, and there were always answers.

And I liked the answers. They fit. They were logical. They placed everything in perspective and made me see the picture as a whole. I thought you might find it interesting why I thought the only logical thing I could do was kill him.

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. Focused on the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate fate, this tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdoms gives us one of the most riveting characters in twentieth-century American fiction.

Travels in the Scriptorium is a fantastic, labyrinthine novel from the beloved author Paul Auster. An old man awakens, disoriented, in an unfamiliar chamber. With no memory of who he is or how he has arrived there, he pores over the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching his own hazy mind for clues.

Determining that he is locked in, the man—identified only as Mr. Blank—begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an alternate world the man doesn't recognize. Nevertheless, the pages seem to have been left for him, along with a haunting set of photographs.

As the day passes, various characters call on the man in his cell—vaguely familiar people, some who seem to resent him for crimes he can't remember—and each brings frustrating hints of his identity and his past. All the while, an overhead camera clicks and clicks, recording his movements, and a microphone records every sound in the room. Someone is watching.

Both chilling and poignant, Travels in the Scriptorium is vintage Auster: mysterious texts, fluid identities, a hidden past, and, somewhere, an obscure tormentor. And yet, as we discover during one day in the life of Mr. Blank, his world is not so different from our own.

مثل أبيلار هيلواز دفنا في قبر مشترك، ارتبط اسماهما معاً إلى الأبد. كانا زوجين من أزواج العالم الأسطوريين. لا يمكننا أن نفكر باحد منهما من دون التفكير بالآخر: سيمون دو بوفوار وجان بول سارتر.

في نهاية الحرب العالمية الثانية تبوأ سارتر وبوفوار، على نحو سريع، مكانة عالية بوصفهما مفكريَنْ حرين وملتزمين. كتبا في جميع الأنواع الأدبية: المسرحيات، الروايات، الدراسات الفلسفية، قصص الرحلات، السيرة الذاتية، المذكرات، أدب السيرة، والصحافة.

وقد شكلت رواية سارتر الأولى «الغثيان» حدثاً في عالم الرواية الفرنسية المعاصرة. وغدت مسرحياته العشر حديث الموسم المسرحي في باريس. وأحدثت دراساته الفلسفية: «الوجود والعدم» و «نقد الفكر الديالكتيكي» وغيرها صدمة. هذا إلى جانب بحثيه الأدبيين اللذين كرسهما لجان جينيه وغوستاف فلوبير.

لكنه ربما سيُذكر على نحو أفضل من خلال سيرته الذاتية «كلمات»، هذا الكتاب الذي أكسبه جائزة نوبل. وسترتبط بوفوار دائماً بكتابها الهام «الجنس الآخر» وبمذكراتها وبروايتها اللامعة «المندرين» التي استحضرت فيها جو أوروبا بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية.

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a history teacher in a secondary school. He is divorced, involved in a rather one-sided relationship with a bank clerk, and he is depressed. To lift his depression, a colleague suggests he rent a certain video. Tertuliano watches the film and is unimpressed. During the night, noises in his apartment wake him. He goes into the living room to find that the VCR is replaying the video, and as he watches in astonishment, he sees an actor who looks exactly like him—or, more specifically, exactly like the man he was five years before, moustachioed and fuller in the face.

He sleeps badly. Against his own better judgement, Tertuliano decides to pursue his double. As he establishes the man's identity, what begins as a whimsical story becomes a dark meditation on identity and, perhaps, on the crass assumptions behind cloning—that we are merely our outward appearance rather than the sum of our experiences.

Contempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous—his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage.

Contempt (which was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard’s no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching examination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society.

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, is a collection that showcases Kafka's mastery in storytelling, encapsulating the anxieties and alienation of modern life in a surreal, often absurd, manner.

The Metamorphosis is Kafka's most famous story, where Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect. This harrowing yet amusing tale explores themes of alienation, family loyalty, and unconditional love.

Also included is The Judgment, which Kafka considered his breakthrough story, and The Stoker, the first chapter of his novel Amerika. These stories, along with The Metamorphosis, form a suite Kafka referred to as "The Sons," presenting a devastating portrait of the modern family.

Other notable stories in this collection include In the Penal Colony, which delves into the horrors of a torture machine, and A Hunger Artist, a tale of an artist's struggle to communicate with an uncomprehending public.

Kafka's lucid and succinct writing style captures the labyrinthine complexities and futility-laden horror of modern existence, making this collection a must-read for those interested in psychological and existential themes.

Brilliant, caustic, comic, and severe, The Elementary Particles is an unflinching look at a modern world plagued by consumerism, materialism, and unchecked scientific experimentation. An international bestseller and controversial literary phenomenon, this is the story of two half-brothers abandoned by a mother who gave herself fully to the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties.

Bruno, overweight and a failure at everything, is himself a raucously promiscuous hedonist, while Michel, his younger brother, is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is an endlessly unpredictable and provocative tale that speaks to the impossible redemption of the human condition.

Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut’s funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors—a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb—Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness.

Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe and who we say we are. It's a darkly comedic narrative that challenges our perceptions and invites us to explore the chaotic dance of fate and consequence.

In this National Book Award–winning novel from a "brilliantly breathtaking writer," a young Southerner searches for meaning in the midst of Mardi Gras. On the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, Binx Bolling is a lost soul. A stockbroker and member of an established New Orleans family, Binx's one escape is the movie theater that transports him from the falseness of his life.

With Mardi Gras in full swing, Binx, along with his cousin Kate, sets out to find his true purpose amid the excesses of the carnival that surrounds him. Buoyant yet powerful, The Moviegoer is a poignant indictment of modern values, and an unforgettable story of a week that will change two lives forever.

The first novel of Samuel Beckett's mordant and exhilarating midcentury trilogy introduces us to Molloy, who has been mysteriously incarcerated, and who subsequently escapes to discover the whereabouts of his mother.

In the latter part of this curious masterwork, a certain Jacques Moran is deputized by anonymous authorities to search for the aforementioned Molloy.

In the trilogy's second novel, Malone, who might or might not be Molloy himself, addresses us with his ruminations while in the act of dying.

The third novel consists of the fragmented monologue - delivered, like the monologues of the previous novels, in a mournful rhetoric that possesses the utmost splendor and beauty - of what might or might not be an armless and legless creature living in an urn outside an eating house.

Taken together, these three novels represent the high-water mark of the literary movement we call Modernism. Within their linguistic terrain, where stories are taken up, broken off, and taken up again, where voices rise and crumble and are resurrected, we can discern the essential lineaments of our modern condition, and encounter an awesome vision, tragic yet always compelling and always mysteriously invigorating, of consciousness trapped and struggling inside the boundaries of nature.

Belki de doğru düşünüyordu; herkesin bir yoku vardı köyde, herkes kadar bir yoklar sürüsü vardı da evlere girip çıkıyorlardı insanlar gibi, kahveye oturup çay içiyor, tarlada çalışıyor, çınarın gölgesinde toplanıyor ve ölümlerde ağlayıp düğünlerde oynuyorlardı. Muhtarın haberi yoktu bunlardan, hiçbiriyle karşılaşmamıştı. Ola ki köylüler büyük bir titizlikle gizliyordu yoklar sürüsünü, herkes kendi yokunu sessizce besliyordu.

Bu konuda her insanın kendine özgü bir yöntemi vardı belki; sözgelimi, kimi geceler boyu düş yedirirken kimi ninni içiriyordu yokuna, kimi türkülerle masallarla besliyordu, kimi sessizliğiyle büyütüp sesiyle uyutuyordu, kimi de kendini yediriyordu yiyecek diye, giyecek diye kendini giydiriyordu. Cennet'in oğlu da...

Is it possible to die a happy death? This is the central question of Camus's astonishing early novel, published posthumously and greeted as a major literary event. It tells the story of a young Algerian, Mersault, who defies society's rules by committing a murder and escaping punishment, then experimenting with different ways of life and finally dying a happy man.

In many ways, A Happy Death is a fascinating first sketch for The Outsider, but it can also be seen as a candid self-portrait, drawing on Camus's memories of his youth, travels, and early relationships. It is infused with lyrical descriptions of the sun-drenched Algiers of his childhood - the place where, eventually, Mersault is able to find peace and die 'without anger, without hatred, without regret'.

Life After God is a compellingly innovative collection of stories that cuts through the hype of modern living. It travels inward to the elusive terrain of dreams and nightmares, exploring themes that resonate deeply with our generation.

Douglas Coupland invites us into worlds we know exist but rarely see, finding rare grace amid our pre-millennium turmoil. As we navigate a culture seemingly beyond God, we confront the beauty and disenchantments of the world that temper our souls.

In a world of commodities and consumerism, where spiritual impulses have nowhere to flow, this book delves into the questions of how we cope with loneliness, anxiety, and the collapse of relationships. It seeks to uncover a new kind of truth for a culture stuck on fast-forward, inviting us to reach the quiet, safe layer of our lives.

Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.

Murphy, Samuel Beckett's first published novel, was written in English and published in London in 1938. Beckett himself subsequently translated the book into French, and it was published in France in 1947. The novel recounts the hilarious but tragic life of Murphy in London as he attempts to establish a home and to amass sufficient fortune for his intended bride to join him.

Set in London and Dublin, during the first decades of the Irish Republic, the title character loves Celia in a “striking case of love requited” but must first establish himself in London before his intended bride will make the journey from Ireland to join him. Beckett comically describes the various schemes that Murphy employs to stretch his meager resources and the pastimes that he uses to fill the hours of his days.

Eventually, Murphy lands a job as a nurse at Magdalen Mental Mercyseat hospital, where he is drawn into the mad world of the patients which ends in a fateful game of chess. While grounded in the comedy and absurdity of much of daily life, Beckett’s work is also an early exploration of themes that recur throughout his entire body of work including sanity and insanity and the very meaning of life.

Endgame & Act Without Words is a brilliant work by Samuel Beckett, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. This play is a pinnacle of Beckett's characteristic raw minimalism, offering a pure and devastating distillation of the human essence in the face of approaching death.

Originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett himself, Endgame is considered by many critics to be his greatest single work. Four characters engage in a game of life, concluding with the exit of one character and the immobility of the remaining three, in a profound study of man's relationship to his fellows.

Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a successful Parisian barrister, has come to recognize the deep-seated hypocrisy of his existence. His epigrammatic and, above all, discomforting monologue gradually saps, then undermines, the reader's own complacency.

The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel. After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman. Together their fates become intertwined as they work side by side at this Sisyphean task.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a profound narrative that explores the story of a young woman deeply in love with a man who is caught in a battle between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing habits. Another strand of the story involves one of his mistresses and her modestly faithful lover. This compelling novel skillfully weaves together geographically distant locales, ingenious and playful musings, and a diverse array of styles, asserting its place as a significant accomplishment by one of the world's truly exceptional writers.

A stranger walks out of a bar and is later found dead at the wheel of his car. The narrator creates the story of this man — or, rather, two stories, based on the two personae that he has imagined. One of these is named Enderlin; the other, Gantenbein.

Originally published as A Wilderness of Mirrors.

The Awful Rowing Toward God is a powerful collection of poetry by the inventive and prolific poet Anne Sexton. This work tackles a universal theme: the agonizing search for God that is part of our lives. Derived from intense personal experience, Sexton explores the dilemmas and triumphs, the agony and peace of her highly unorthodox faith.

This collection shares her findings as the quest progresses, speaking to our most passionate yearnings for love and our deepest fears of evil and death. The uncompromising honesty and vividness of this collection confirm her stature as a compelling voice of our time.

From the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial—one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century—the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman.

Arriving in a village to take up the position of land surveyor for the mysterious lord of a castle, the character known as K. finds himself in a bitter and baffling struggle to contact his new employer and go about his duties.

The Castle's original manuscript was left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power previously unknown to English language readers.

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spread at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time, the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain."

Roquentin's efforts to try and come to terms with his life, his philosophical and psychological struggles, give Sartre the opportunity to dramatize the tenets of his Existentialist creed.