Literary theme analysis, by a book like {foo}
Books about Human Suffering
The Stranger
by Albert Camus
A man's journey of existentialism, questioning the meaning of life and death.
Meursault learns of the death of his mother, who has been living in a retirement home. At her funeral, he expresses none of the expected emotions of grief. When asked if he wishes to view the body, ... (Wikipedia)
Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse
A spiritual journey of self-discovery for a young man in search of enlightenment.
The story takes place in the ancient Nepalese kingdom of Kapilavastu . Siddhartha decides to leave his home in the hope of gaining spiritual illumination by becoming an ascetic wandering beggar of ... (Wikipedia)
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
A comprehensive account of the history and science of cancer, from its origins to modern treatments.
An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found, here, and, here,. The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer - from its first documented ... (Goodreads)
The Plague
by Albert Camus
A small town in Algeria is struck by a deadly plague, testing the courage and faith of its citizens.
The book begins with an epigraph quoting Daniel Defoe , author of, A Journal of the Plague Year, . In the town of Oran, thousands of rats, initially unnoticed by the populace, begin to die in the ... (Wikipedia)
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
A dystopian society where citizens are genetically engineered and prescribed pleasure-inducing drugs.
The novel opens in the World State city of London in AF (After Ford) 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar ), where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination ... (Wikipedia)
Nana
by Émile Zola
Tragic story of a young woman's life, and the devastating consequences of her actions.
Nana tells the story of Nana Coupeau's rise from streetwalker to high-class prostitute during the last three years of the French Second Empire . Nana first appeared near the end of Zola's earlier ... (Wikipedia)
Brother Odd
by Dean Koontz
A traumatized war veteran seeks solace and peace in a secluded monastery, only to uncover more mysteries from his past.
The novel begins seven months after, Forever Odd, . During that time, Odd Thomas has been a guest at St. Bartholomew's Abbey, where he hopes to seek peace and understanding. During his time there, he ... (Wikipedia)
The Black Obelisk
by Erich Maria Remarque
A soldier's story of survival in the chaos and destruction of WWI.
From the author of the masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Black Obelisk, is a classic novel of the troubling aftermath of World War I in Germany. A hardened young veteran from the First ... (Goodreads)
Of Human Bondage
by W. Somerset Maugham
A young man's struggles to find a sense of purpose, despite a series of catastrophic misfortunes.
The book begins with the death of Helen Carey, the much beloved mother of nine-year-old Philip Carey. Philip has a club foot and his father had died a few months before. Now orphaned, he is sent to ... (Wikipedia)
Pensées
by Blaise Pascal
Reflections on faith, reason and the human condition, presenting a defense of Christianity.
Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation ... (Goodreads)
The Holy Bible: King James Version
by Anonymous
A collection of books containing stories and teachings of faith, morality, and redemption.
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
by John M. Barry
Chronicling the 1918 influenza pandemic, examining the medical, social and governmental responses.
At the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It ... (Goodreads)
Sophie's Choice
by William Styron
A survivor of the Holocaust is confronted with a devastating moral dilemma.
Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel, has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding house in ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific
by Robert Leckie
A WWII Marine's first-hand account of his harrowing experiences in the Pacific Theater.
Now the inspiration behind the HBO series THE PACIFIC Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts to ever come out of the Second World War. Robert Leckie was 21 when he enlisted in the US ... (Goodreads)
2666
by Roberto Bolaño
An epic saga of interconnected stories exploring the darkness of the human soul.
The novel is substantially concerned with violence and death. According to Levi Stahl, it "is another iteration of Bolaño's increasingly baroque, cryptic, and mystical personal vision of the world, ... (Wikipedia)
From Hell
by Alan Moore
A gripping story of murder, conspiracy and suspense set in 19th century London.
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence , also known as Prince Eddy, marries and fathers a child with Annie Crook, a shop girl in London's East End . Prince Eddy had visited the area under an assumed ... (Wikipedia)
Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell
An exploration of the dark side of two cities, and how life can be different for the privileged and the destitute.
This unusual fictional memoir - in good part autobiographical - narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among the down-and-outs of two great ... (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)
Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens
A tale of injustice, exploring the social and economic inequalities of Victorian England.
The novel begins in Marseilles "thirty years ago" (c. 1826), with the notorious murderer Rigaud telling his prison cellmate John Baptist Cavalletto how he killed his wife, just prior to being ... (Wikipedia)
The Pearl
by John Steinbeck
A poor diver's dream of wealth is dashed when his newfound riches ultimately bring unhappiness and tragedy.
Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their ... (Goodreads)
Cancer Ward
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A group of cancer patients in a Soviet hospital confront life and death with humor and courage.
One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the “cancerous” Soviet ... (Goodreads)
Prometheus Bound
by Aeschylus
Prometheus, a Titan, is punished by Zeus for giving fire to humans. He is chained to a rock and tormented by various gods.
For readers accustomed to the relatively undramatic standard translations of Prometheus Bound , this version by James Scully, a poet and winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize, and C. John Herington, one ... (Goodreads)
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories
by Anton Chekhov
Collection of stories depicting the struggles of life in late 19th century Russia.
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics (1899), as well as several lesser-known works, no less masterful in their composition. David Plante is a ... (Goodreads)
Something to Fear
by Robert Kirkman
Survivors battle the undead in a post-apocalyptic world, struggling to stay alive.
In this volume of the NYT bestselling survival horror, Rick and his band of survivors work to build a larger network of thriving communities, and soon discover that Negan's "Saviors" prove to be a ... (Goodreads)
A Country Doctor's Notebook
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A young doctor's struggles to practice medicine in a small rural village.
Brilliant stories that show the growth of a novelist's mind, and the raw material that fed the wild surrealism of Bulgakov's later fiction. With the ink still wet on his diploma, the ... (Goodreads)
Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
by Flora Rheta Schreiber
A psychological case study of the effects of dissociative identity disorder.
Here is the unbelievable yet true story of Sybil Dorsett, a survivor of terrible childhood abuse who as an adult was a victim of sudden and mysterious blackouts. What happened during those blackouts ... (Goodreads)
The Trojan Women
by Euripides
The aftermath of the Trojan War, as the women of Troy mourn their losses and face an uncertain future.
Euripides's play follows the fates of the women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and their remaining families taken away as slaves. However, it begins first with the ... (Wikipedia)
A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back
by Kevin Hazzard
A memoir of a paramedic's experiences in Atlanta, Georgia, dealing with life and death situations on a daily basis.
A former paramedic’s visceral, poignant, and mordantly funny account of a decade spent on Atlanta’s mean streets saving lives and connecting with the drama and occasional beauty that lies inside ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Road to Wigan Pier
by George Orwell
Journey of social discovery, examining the struggles of working class life in 1930s England.
A searing account of George Orwell’s experiences of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that ... (Goodreads)
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