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Recommendations based on The Atrocity Exhibitionby J.G. Ballard
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Crash
by J.G. Ballard
A dystopian novel exploring the surreal and chaotic landscape of a near-future Los Angeles.
The story is told through the eyes of narrator James Ballard, named after the author himself, but it centers on the sinister figure of Dr. Robert Vaughan, a "former TV-scientist, turned nightmare ... (Wikipedia)
Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Surrealist exploration of addiction, delusions, and reality.
Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. The book begins with the ... (Wikipedia)
Empire of the Sun
by J.G. Ballard
A young British boy's life is turned upside down during WWII as he is separated from his parents and forced to survive in a Japanese internment camp.
The novel recounts the story of a young British boy, Jamie (“Jim”) Graham (named after Ballard's two first names, "James Graham"), who lives with his parents in Shanghai . After the Pearl Harbor ... (Wikipedia)
The Drowned World
by J.G. Ballard
A post-apocalyptic world where civilization has been drowned by rising temperatures.
Set in the year 2145 in a post-apocalyptic and unrecognisable London, The Drowned World is a setting of tropical temperatures, flooding and accelerated evolution. , The Earth went back to its ... (Wikipedia)
Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A collection of four works exploring the human psyche, morality, and existentialism through the lens of Russian society.
The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg . He is contemplating the ridiculousness of his own life, and his recent realization that nothing matters to him any more. It ... (Wikipedia)
Junky
by William S. Burroughs
A gritty, autobiographical account of a man's descent into the underworld of addiction.
Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch , an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky , his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an ... (Goodreads)
Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino
A fantastical exploration of the cities of the imagination and the possibilities of life.
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young ... (Goodreads)
Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A portrait of the struggles of a troubled man, exploring his inner turmoil.
The novel is divided into two parts. Serving as an introduction into the mind of the narrator, the first part of Notes from Underground is split into nine chapters: The narrator observes that utopian ... (Wikipedia)
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
by Angela Carter
A collection of subversive, darkly fantastical tales exploring the power of femininity.
Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural ... (Goodreads)
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)
Ulysses
by James Joyce
Epic narrative following a day in the life of an Irishman living in Dublin.
It is 8 a.m. Buck Mulligan , a boisterous medical student, calls Stephen Dedalus (a young writer encountered as the principal subject of, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ) up to the roof of ... (Wikipedia)
Steppenwolf
by Hermann Hesse
The inner struggles of a tortured soul as he searches for redemption.
The book is presented as a manuscript written by its protagonist , a middle-aged man named Harry Haller, who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. The acquaintance adds a ... (Wikipedia)
Ficciones
by Jorge Luis Borges
A collection of short stories exploring the limits of the imagination.
The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his ... (Goodreads)
The Complete Stories and Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe
A collection of dark and mysterious stories and poems, exploring the depths of the human condition.
This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary ... (Barnes & Noble)
Time Out of Joint
by Philip K. Dick
A man discovers reality is not as it seems, and he must find a way to uncover the truth.
Ragle Gumm lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His unusual profession consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper contest called "Where Will The Little Green Man ... (Wikipedia)
VALIS
by Philip K. Dick
A man's quest to uncover the meaning behind a series of mystical visions.
VALIS is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer ). This disorienting and bleakly funny ... (Goodreads)
Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
Two men wait for a mysterious figure who never arrives, reflecting on their lives and existence.
Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, have met near a leafless tree. Estragon spent the previous night lying in a ditch and receiving a beating from some unnamed assailants. The two men discuss a variety ... (Wikipedia)
Story of the Eye
by Georges Bataille
A surrealist exploration of transgression, sex, and violence.
Story of the Eye consists of several vignettes, centered around the sexual passion existing between the unnamed late adolescent male narrator and Simone, his primary female partner. Within this ... (Wikipedia)
Journey to the End of the Night
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
A darkly comic, nihilistic journey of self-discovery, following a man into the heart of an absurd world.
Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper-realistic, boiling over with black humor Céline’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper realistic—boils over with bitter humor and revulsion at ... (Barnes & Noble)
Childhood's End
by Arthur C. Clarke
Human race is transformed by an alien presence, leading to the dawn of a new age.
The novel is divided into three parts, following a third-person omniscient narrative with no main character. , In some editions, the short first chapter is a separate prologue rather than the ... (Wikipedia)
Neuromancer
by William Gibson
A hacker's journey through a dystopian cyberpunk world, searching for a way to survive.
Henry Dorsett Case is a low-level hustler in the dystopian underworld of Chiba City , Japan. Once a talented computer hacker , Case was caught stealing from his employer. As punishment for his theft, ... (Wikipedia)
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe
A man finds himself stuck in a remote village, struggling to escape a mysterious sand pit.
In 1955, , Jumpei Niki, , a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a ... (Wikipedia)
Paradise Lost
by John Milton
Epic poem of the Fall of Man, exploring the depths of human nature and the consequences of sin.
John Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of ... (Goodreads)
Blindness
by José Saramago
A society is plunged into chaos when everyone suddenly loses their sight.
Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortune of a ... (Wikipedia)
Zero K
by Don DeLillo
A billionaire funds a secret compound where people can undergo cryogenic freezing to achieve immortality. His son joins, but questions the morality of the process.
The novel concerns a billionaire , Ross Lockhart, who is inspired by the terminal illness of his wife Artis to seek immortality for both of them through cryopreservation . The novel is narrated by ... (Wikipedia)
A Hunger Artist
by Franz Kafka
A unique artist's exploration of suffering, as he strives to make his art ever more extreme.
"A Hunger Artist" is told retrospectively through third-person narration. The narrator looks back several decades from "today", to a time when the public marveled at the professional hunger artist. ... (Wikipedia)
The Man in the High Castle
by Philip K. Dick
Set in an alternate 1962, a man must confront a dark and oppressive new world order.
It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty ... (Goodreads)
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson
A group of people investigating a mysterious and haunted house, uncovering its secrets.
It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted ... (Goodreads)
The Birthday Party
by Harold Pinter
A seemingly ordinary birthday party turns into a nightmare of paranoia and fear.
While Meg prepares to serve her husband Petey breakfast, Stanley, described as a man "in his late thirties" (23), who is dishevelled and unshaven, enters from upstairs. Alternating between maternal ... (Wikipedia)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
by Tom Stoppard
A humorous exploration of fate and free will, seen through the eyes of two minor characters in Shakespeare's "Hamlet".
Hamlet told from the worm's-eye view of two minor characters, bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, reality and illusion mix, and where fate leads heroes to a ... (Goodreads)
