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Recommendations based on Red Sorghumby Mo Yan
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To Live
by Yu Hua
A man's life journey, depicting the social and political changes in China.
From the author of Brothers and China in Ten Words this celebrated contemporary classic of Chinese literature was also adapted for film by Zhang Yimou. This searing novel, originally banned in China ... (Goodreads)
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
by Gabriel García Márquez
A murder mystery narrated by the townspeople and tracing the events leading up to the crime.
The non-linear story, told by an anonymous narrator, begins with the morning of Santiago Nasar's death. The reader learns that Santiago lives with his mother, Placida Linero; the cook, Victoria ... (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)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)
The Feast of the Goat
by Mario Vargas Llosa
A political thriller exploring a dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
The novel's narrative is divided into three distinct strands. One is centred on Urania Cabral, a fictional Dominican character; another deals with the conspirators involved in Trujillo's ... (Wikipedia)
Baudolino
by Umberto Eco
A medieval tale of adventure, deception and the search for truth.
In the year of 1204, Baudolino of Alessandria enters Constantinople , unaware of the Fourth Crusade that has thrown the city into chaos. In the confusion, he meets Niketas Choniates and saves his ... (Wikipedia)
The Happy Prince
by Oscar Wilde
Fairy tale about a statue of a prince, whose golden heart brings joy to all around him.
More than a hundred years ago, Oscar Wilde created this moving story for his children. Now shimmering illustrations, as bejeweled and golden as the Prince himself, give glowing life to the many ... (Goodreads)
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.
The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (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)
Disgrace
by J.M. Coetzee
A professor's fall from grace in post-apartheid South Africa, reckoning with the consequences of his actions.
David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own ... (Wikipedia)
The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes
An exploration of memory and its impact on the present, looking at the choices we make in life.
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be ... (Goodreads)
Père Goriot
by Honoré de Balzac
A tale of ambition, greed, and human relationships in 19th century Paris.
The novel opens with an extended description of the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris' rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève covered with vines, owned by the widow Madame Vauquer. The residents include ... (Wikipedia)
The Paul Street Boys
by Ferenc Molnár
A group of boys navigate their way through the streets of Budapest, facing their fears and learning about friendship.
The war between two groups of Hungarian boys living in Budapest. One with Hungarian national colours (red, white, green) is defending the square from redshirts (from Garibaldi's redshirts), who want ... (Goodreads)
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
Tragic story of the decline of a southern family, exploring the human condition.
The first section of the novel is narrated by Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a source of shame to the family due to his diminished mental capacity; the only characters who show genuine care for him are ... (Wikipedia)
The Journey to the East
by Hermann Hesse
A spiritual quest in search of truth, enlightenment and community.
Journey to the East is written from the point of view of a man (called "H. H." in the book) who becomes a member of "The League", a timeless religious sect whose members include famous fictional and ... (Wikipedia)
Genghis: Birth of an Empire
by Conn Iggulden
Epic tale of a determined man's rise to power, uniting many nomadic tribes into a powerful Mongol nation.
He was born Temujin, the son of a khan, raised in a clan of hunters migrating across the rugged steppe. Temujin's young life was shaped by a series of brutal acts: the betrayal of his father by a ... (Goodreads)
Amsterdam
by Ian McEwan
Interconnected stories of love and morality among a small group of characters in Amsterdam.
At the funeral of photographer and writer Molly Lane, three of Molly's former lovers converge. They include newspaper editor Vernon Halliday and composer Clive Linley who are old friends, and British ... (Wikipedia)
Our Man in Havana
by Graham Greene
A humorous tale of espionage in Cold War Cuba, as a vacuum cleaner salesman attempts to outwit the British Secret Service.
Graham Greene's classic Cuban spy story, now with a new package and a new introduction, First published in 1959,, Our Man in Havana, is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a ... (Goodreads)
Alamut
by Vladimir Bartol
A philosophical quest for power and truth, set in medieval Persia.
The novel is set in the 11th century at the fortress of Alamut , which was seized by the leader of the Ismailis , Hassan-i Sabbah or Sayyiduna (سیدنا, "Our Master"). At the start of the story, he is ... (Wikipedia)
The Decameron
by Giovanni Boccaccio
A collection of tales of love, adventure, and comedy set in medieval Florence.
The Decameron (c.1351) is an entertaining series of one hundred stories written in the wake of the Black Death. The stories are told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble ... (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 Discovery of Heaven
by Harry Mulisch
An epic tale of three men's search for a divine stone, testing the boundaries of faith and science.
An angel -like being is ordered to return to Heaven the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments . The divine being, however, cannot himself travel to Earth, and on several occasions in the book ... (Wikipedia)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
A butler reflects on his past, grappling with the lost opportunities of a life devoted to service.
The novel tells, in first-person narration , the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (who is recently deceased, and whom Stevens ... (Wikipedia)
Island
by Aldous Huxley
A utopian society on a remote island is challenged by the reemergence of human nature.
Englishman William Asquith "Will" Farnaby deliberately wrecks his boat on the shores of the Kingdom of Pala, an island halfway between Sumatra and the Andaman Islands , thus forcing his entry to this ... (Wikipedia)
Tortilla Flat
by John Steinbeck
A comedy of friendship and adventure, focusing on a group of paisanos living in California during the Great Depression.
Above the town of Monterey on the California coast lies the shabby district of Tortilla Flat, inhabited by a loose gang of jobless locals of Mexican-Indian - Spanish-Caucasian descent (who typically ... (Wikipedia)
The Good Soldier Švejk
by Jaroslav Hašek
A Czech soldier's satirical adventures during WWI, highlighting the absurdity of war.
The story begins in Prague with news of the assassination in Sarajevo that precipitates World War I . Švejk displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no ... (Wikipedia)
Life is Elsewhere
by Milan Kundera
A young poet's journey through life, love, and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.
Kundera initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age . The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly ... (Goodreads)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
by Ernest Hemingway
Collection of short stories exploring the human condition and the consequences of life choices.
The ideal introduction to the genius of Ernest Hemingway,, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories, contains ten of Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction. Selected from, ... (Goodreads)
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)
