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Recommendations based on A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Worksby Jonathan Swift
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Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
by Jonathan Swift
A fanciful journey to lands of tiny people, giant people, talking horses, and other strange creatures.
The travel begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. During his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck ... (Wikipedia)
King Lear
by William Shakespeare
An aging king's descent into madness reveals the consequences of pride and vanity.
Shakespeare’s King Lear challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the ... (Goodreads)
A Modest Proposal
by Jonathan Swift
A satirical essay that mocks British policies in Ireland and offers a shocking solution.
Candide
by Voltaire
A young man's satirical journey through life, encountering misfortune and eventual optimism.
Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a ... (Goodreads)
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
by William Blake
A poetic collection exploring the duality of human nature, innocence and experience.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience, is an collection of poems by William Blake., Note:, For a complete Table of Contents of the included poems, see the 'Questions' section below. This book appeared ... (Goodreads)
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
A journey into the depths of the human psyche, exploring the darkness of colonialism.
Aboard the Nellie , anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend , Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow ... (Wikipedia)
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)
The Awakening
by Kate Chopin
A woman's journey of self-discovery, challenging the norms of the Victorian era.
When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken ... (Goodreads)
Inferno
by Dante Alighieri
An epic journey through the nine circles of Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil.
Of the great poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. In the Inferno, Dante not only judges sin but strives to ... (Goodreads)
Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller
Tragic story of a man's attempt to find success and happiness in a world of false promises.
'For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a ... (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)
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)
Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
An aging knight's adventures and misadventures, filled with chivalry, honor, and satire.
Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in ... (Goodreads)
Othello
by William Shakespeare
A tale of jealousy, manipulation, and tragedy, as one man's descent into madness leads to disastrous consequences.
In Othello, Shakespeare creates a powerful drama of a marriage that begins with fascination (between the exotic Moor Othello and the Venetian lady Desdemona), with elopement, and with intense mutual ... (Goodreads)
The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
by Sophocles
Ancient tragedy of a family's fall from grace due to a fateful prophecy.
English versions of Sophocles’ three great tragedies based on the myth of Oedipus, translated for a modern audience by two gifted poets. Index. ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
by W.B. Yeats
Exploration of loss, love, and life's journey through the lens of Irish folklore and literature.
The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats includes all of the poems authorized by Yeats for inclusion in his standard canon. Breathtaking in range, it encompasses the entire arc of his career, from luminous ... (Goodreads)
Dubliners
by James Joyce
Collection of stories about everyday life in Dublin, exploring the Irish psyche.
This work of art reflects life in Ireland at the turn of the last century, and by rejecting euphemism, reveals to the Irish their unromantic realities. Each of the 15 stories offers glimpses into the ... (Goodreads)
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)
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A satirical exploration of human folly, exposing the dangers of unchecked science and technology.
Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ... Dr Felix Hoenikker, ... (Goodreads)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
An exploration of a young man's struggle to find his identity and place in the world.
The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an ... (Goodreads)
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
A grim tale of a Victorian industrial city, highlighting its struggles of poverty, injustice and strife.
"My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else," proclaimed Charles Dickens in explaining the theme of this classic novel. Published in 1854, the story concerns one Thomas ... (Goodreads)
The Jungle Books
by Rudyard Kipling
Collection of stories about Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves, and his adventures in the jungle.
The Jungle Books can be regarded as classic stories told by an adult to children. But they also constitute a complex literary work of art in which the whole of Kipling's philosophy of life is ... (Goodreads)
The Taming of the Shrew
by William Shakespeare
A wealthy man seeks to marry off his shrewish daughter, but finds a suitor who can match her wit.
Renowned as Shakespeare's most boisterous comedy, The Taming of the Shrew is the tale of two young men, the hopeful Lucentio and the worldly Petruchio, and the two sisters they meet in Padua. ... (Goodreads)
American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
A corporate psychopath's descent into homicidal madness, exposing the dark side of 1980s New York.
Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho follows the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his mid-20s when the story begins, ... (Wikipedia)
A Separate Peace
by John Knowles
A coming-of-age story about two boys and their complex friendship set during World War II.
Gene Forrester returns to his old prep school, Devon (a thinly veiled portrayal of Knowles's alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy ), , 15 years after he graduated, to visit two places he regards as ... (Wikipedia)
Metamorphoses
by Ovid
A collection of tales of transformation, featuring gods and mortals.
Prized through the ages for its splendor and its savage, sophisticated wit, The Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of Western culture–the first attempt to link all the Greek myths, before and after ... (Goodreads)
The English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje
A World War II love story, exploring the depths of human emotion in the midst of tragedy.
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, ... (Goodreads)
Song of Solomon
by Toni Morrison
A tale of family, heritage, and identity, exploring the power of memory and its impact on the present.
Song of Solomon opens with the death of Robert Smith, an insurance agent and member of The Seven Days, an organization that kills white people in retaliation for the racial killing of black people. ... (Wikipedia)
