Literary theme analysis, by a book like {foo}
Books about Disorientation
The Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka
A man's transformation into an insect and the surreal journey that follows.
Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin". He initially considers the transformation to be temporary and slowly ponders the consequences of this ... (Wikipedia)
The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy
by Stanisław Lem
A satirical sci-fi journey of a man struggling to make sense of a world of surrealism and absurdity.
Ijon Tichy is sent to the Eighth World Futurological Congress in Costa Rica , by professor Tarantoga . The conference is set to focus on the world's overpopulation crisis and ways of dealing with it. ... (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)
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)
Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
A surreal exploration of war and technology, and their impact on the human spirit.
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its ... (Goodreads)
House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski
A family discovers a hidden door in their home leading to an ever-shifting labyrinth.
House of Leaves begins with a first-person narrative by Johnny Truant, a Los Angeles tattoo parlor employee and professed unreliable narrator . Truant is searching for a new apartment when his friend ... (Wikipedia)
Leviathan
by Paul Auster
A mysterious stranger's dark and somewhat surreal journey of self-exploration.
The story is told by Peter Aaron about the victim, Benjamin Sachs, his best friend whom he first meets as a fellow writer in a Greenwich Village bar in 1975. Peter decides to try to piece together ... (Wikipedia)
Number9Dream
by David Mitchell
A young man's surreal journey of self-discovery in Tokyo, uncovering hidden truths.
David Mitchell follows his eerily precocious, globe-striding first novel, Ghostwritten , with a work that is in its way even more ambitious. In outward form, number9dream is a Dickensian ... (Goodreads)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson
A wild and hallucinatory journey through the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas.
The basic synopsis revolves around journalist Raoul Duke ( Hunter S. Thompson ) and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo ( Oscar Zeta Acosta ), as they arrive in Las Vegas in 1971 to report on the Mint 400 ... (Wikipedia)
Ubik
by Philip K. Dick
A mind-bending sci-fi tale exploring the nature of reality and the power of the subconscious.
By the year 1992, humanity has colonized the Moon and psychic powers are common. The protagonist, Joe Chip, is a debt-ridden technician working for Runciter Associates, a "prudence organization" ... (Wikipedia)
1Q84 Book 1
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal and mysterious journey of two people in a strange alternate world.
The events of 1Q84 take place in Tokyo during a fictionalized year of 1984, with the first volume set between April and June, the second between July and September, and the third between October and ... (Wikipedia)
Dance Dance Dance
by Haruki Murakami
A man's journey through a surreal dreamscape in search of meaning and solace.
The novel follows the surreal misadventures of an unnamed protagonist who makes a living as a commercial writer. He is compelled to return to the Dolphin Hotel, a seedy establishment where he once ... (Wikipedia)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal exploration of two separate yet interwoven realities.
The story is split between parallel narratives. The odd-numbered chapters take place in the 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland', although the phrase is not used anywhere in the text, only in page headers. The ... (Wikipedia)
Marabou Stork Nightmares
by Irvine Welsh
A young man struggles to make sense of the chaotic world around him.
Roy Strang narrates the book from an (at first) unexplained coma, which he has been in for the previous two years. His life in this state is a miserable affair, surrounded by uncaring doctors and his ... (Wikipedia)
Every Day
by David Levithan
A story of love, identity and acceptance, as a person wakes up in a different body each day.
Every Day is about the story of A, a person who wakes up occupying a different body each day. As described by Frank Bruni of The New York Times , "A. doesn't have a real name, presumably because they ... (Wikipedia)
Survivor
by Chuck Palahniuk
A darkly humorous look at the trappings of modern society and the state of human existence.
The novel opens, in medias res, to Tender Branson, who has just hijacked an airliner, released its passengers, and is now sitting in the cockpit telling his life story to the cockpit voice recorder . ... (Wikipedia)
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
by Franz Kafka
A collection of surreal stories exploring the depths of the human condition.
Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Franz Kafka is now one of the world’s most widely read and discussed authors. His nightmarish novels and short stories have come to symbolize modern man’s ... (Goodreads)
The Girls
by Emma Cline
An exploration of the dark side of teenagehood, as a young girl is drawn into a cult.
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their ... (Goodreads)
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
A multigenerational story of a hermaphrodite's journey to discovering his identity.
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . ... (Barnes & Noble)
Pebble in the Sky
by Isaac Asimov
A man is transported to the future, where he must adjust to a world of advanced technology.
While walking down the street in Chicago, Joseph Schwartz, a retired tailor, is the unwitting victim of a nearby nuclear laboratory accident, by means of which he is instantaneously transported tens ... (Wikipedia)
The Black Book
by Orhan Pamuk
A man's journey of self-discovery in Istanbul, uncovering secrets of his past and the city's hidden stories.
The protagonist, an Istanbul lawyer named Galip, finds one day that his wife Rüya (the name means "dream" in Turkish) has mysteriously left him with very little explanation. He wanders around the ... (Wikipedia)
Coraline
by P. Craig Russell
A young girl's mysterious journey into a parallel world and her struggle to escape.
When Coraline steps through a door in her family's new house, she finds another house, strangely similar to her own (only better). At first, things seem marvelous. The food is better than at home, ... (Goodreads)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
by Philip K. Dick
A sci-fi exploration of the implications of reality-altering technology and the power of corporate greed.
The story begins in a future world where global temperatures have risen so high that in most of the world it is unsafe to be outside without special cooling gear during daylight hours. In a desperate ... (Wikipedia)
Rhinoceros
by Eugène Ionesco
A surrealist play about a town succumbing to mass political conformity.
The play starts in the town square of a small provincial French village. Two friends meet at a coffee shop: eloquent, intellectual and prideful Jean, and the simple, shy, kind-hearted drunkard ... (Wikipedia)
Finnegans Wake
by James Joyce
A dream-like exploration of the subconscious, featuring wordplay, puns, and allusions.
A story with no real beginning or end (it ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence), this "book of Doublends Jined" is as remarkable for its prose as for its ... (Goodreads)
The Darkroom of Damocles
by Willem Frederik Hermans
A man's search for his missing identity amidst the chaos of World War II.
Osewoudt, a cigar store owner from Voorschoten , near Leiden, living under the Nazi occupation , makes his acquaintance with the mysterious Dorbeck, who claims to be involved in the Resistance ... (Wikipedia)
Escape from Freedom
by Erich Fromm
An examination of the psychological effects of modern freedom, exploring how to find a balance between freedom and security.
If humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism. This is the central idea of Escape from Freedom , a landmark work by one ... (Goodreads)
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
by Neil Gaiman
Collection of short stories, exploring the boundaries of the imaginative.
Multiple award winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman returns to dazzle, captivate, haunt, and entertain with this third collection of short fiction following Smoke and Mirrors and ... (Goodreads)
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)
The Unconsoled
by Kazuo Ishiguro
A surreal and dreamlike exploration of a man's inner self and his search for purpose.
Ryder, a renowned pianist, arrives in a Central European city he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give. But then as he traverses a landscape by turns eerie and comical – ... (Goodreads)
V.
by Thomas Pynchon
A mysterious search for the truth, uncovering a vast conspiracy involving multiple characters.
The novel alternates between episodes featuring Benny, Stencil and other members of the Whole Sick Crew (including Profane's sidekick Pig Bodine ) in 1956 (with a few minor flashbacks), and a ... (Wikipedia)
Sleep
by Haruki Murakami
A man's surreal journey of self-reflection and exploration of his inner turmoil.
«النعاس» تلك اليد الشفّافة التي تتسلّل إلى وعينا كلّ يوم فتعبث به وتأخذنا في جولة سحريّة عبر عالم مليء بالألغاز. أيّ معنى لحياتنا في غيابه؟ كذا تساءلنا جميعاً في لحظة بعينها من لحظات حياتنا مستمتعين ... (Goodreads)
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
by Karen Russell
Magical realism tale of young girls raised by wolves, learning to become human in a strange new world.
In these ten glittering short stories, debut author Karen Russell takes us to the ghostly and magical swamps of the Florida Everglades. Here, wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns; a family makes its ... (Goodreads)
The Elephant Vanishes
by Haruki Murakami
Collection of short stories depicting the surreal and mysterious aspects of life.
Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679750536 With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled ... (Goodreads)
A Son of the Circus
by John Irving
A doctor's search for his father and his own identity amidst a chaotic life of a traveling circus.
A Hindi film star . . . an American missionary . . . twins separated at birth . . . a dwarf chauffeur . . . a serial killer . . . all are on a collision course. In the tradition of A Prayer for Owen ... (Goodreads)
The Painted Bird
by Jerzy Kosiński
A young boy wandering through a war-torn Europe, struggling to find his identity.
A harrowing story that follows the wanderings of a boy abandoned by his parents during World War II, The Painted Bird is a dark novel that examines the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence ... (Goodreads)
Fever Dream
by Samanta Schweblin
A woman's surreal, unsettling journey into the depths of her subconscious.
Waking up disoriented in a clinic, Amanda begins a conversation with a young boy named David. He urges Amanda to try to remember what happened before she came to the clinic. Through the constant ... (Wikipedia)
Glamorama
by Bret Easton Ellis
A man's descent into a world of fame, glamour, and superficiality.
The author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero continues to shock and haunt us with his incisive and brilliant dissection of the modern world.In his most ambitious and gripping book yet, Bret ... (Goodreads)
يوتوبيا
by أحمد خالد توفيق
An exploration of the effects of rapid technological advancement on contemporary life.
كيف ستكون مصر عام 2023؟ لقد عزَلَ الأغنياء أنفسهم في (يوتوبيا) الساحل الشمالي تحت حراسة المارينز الأمريكيين، يتعاطون المخدرات ويمارسون المتع المحرمة إلى أقصاها، بينما ينسحق الفقراء خارجها ينهش بعضهم ... (Goodreads)
Aura
by Carlos Fuentes
A surreal dream-like tale of a man struggling to make sense of his world.
Felipe Montero is a young historian looking at the newspaper one day when he sees a job posting that catches his eye. The poster is looking for a French-speaker, youthful, passionate about history, ... (Wikipedia)
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