List A - Perspectives from World Authors - Summer Reading 2018

List A - Perspectives from World Authors

The Alchemist [Allegories; Literary fiction; Spiritual fiction]

Frankenstein : or, The modern Prometheus [Gothic fiction; Horror; Science fiction]

Down and Out in Paris and London [Autobiographical fiction]

The Elegance of the Hedgehog [First person narratives; Multiple perspectives]

The Feast of the Goat [Multiple perspectives; Political fiction]

Kafka on the Shore [Parallel narratives; Surrealist fiction]

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings [Magical realism; Short stories]

The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories [Anthologies; Short stories]

Notes on a Thesis [Comics and Graphic novels]

The Picture of Dorian Gray [Gothic fiction]

The Queue [Dystopian fiction; Political fiction]

The Reluctant Fundamentalist [Books to movies; First person narratives; Psychological fiction]

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death [Essays; Modern philosophy]

The Three-body Problem [Science fiction]

Ulysses [Literary fiction; Multiple perspectives; Psychological fiction]

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China [Collective autobiographies and memoirs; History writing]

The Alchemist

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
ISBN: 9780062315007
Publication Date: 2014-04-15
Tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different--and far more satisfying--than he ever imagined.

Frankenstein : or, The modern Prometheus

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; Harold Bloom (Afterword by); Douglas Clegg (Introduction by)
ISBN: 9780451532244
Publication Date: 2013-10-01
The classic story of science and the search for the origins of life follows Dr. Frankenstein and the obsessive experiment that leads to the creation of a monstrous and deadly creature.

Down and Out in Paris and London

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
ISBN: 9780156262248
Publication Date: 1972-03-15
Orwell's account of his salad days as a penniless British writer in the early 1930s contains a good deal of autobiography, no self-pity, and much humor.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery; Alison Anderson (Translator)
ISBN: 9781933372600
Publication Date: 2008-09-02
Renee, a secretly cultured concierge at an elegant apartment building in the middle of Paris, meets Paloma, an intelligent twelve-year-old who behaves like a mediocre pre-teen until a wealthy Japanese man arrives at the building, causing Paloma and Renee to recognize each other's secrets.

The Feast of the Goat

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa; Edith Grossman (Translator)
ISBN: 9780312420277
Publication Date: 2002-11-09
Returning to her native Dominican Republic, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral discovers that Rafael Trujillo, the depraved dictator called "the Goat," still reigns over his inner circle, which includes Urania's father, with brutality and blackmail.

Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
ISBN: 9781400079278
Publication Date: 2006-01-03
An unlikely alliance forms between Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year-old runaway, and the aging Nakata, a man who has never recovered from a wartime affliction, as they embark on a surreal odyssey through a strange, fantastical world.

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges; William Gibson; André Maurois; Donald A. Yates; James E. Irby
ISBN: 9780811216999
Publication Date: 2007-05-17
Presents 23 short stories, nine parables, and ten essays by twentieth-century Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges in English translation.

The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories,

The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 by Anton Chekov; Paul Debreczney (Introduction by); Ronald Wilks (Translator); Paul Debreczeny (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780140447873
Publication Date: 2002-11-26
A collection of short stories of love and romantic idealism, hardships, and the conditions of the poor by nineteen-century Russian author Anton Pavlovich Chekhov including "My Life" and the title story "The Lady with the Little Dog." Translated from the Russian.

Notes on a Thesis

Notes on a Thesis by Tiphaine Rivière; Francesca Barrie (Translator)
ISBN: 9781910702499
Publication Date: 2018-05-01
When Jeanne is accepted on to a PhD course, she is over the moon, brimming with excitement and grand plans—but is the world ready for her masterful analysis of labyrinth motifs in Kafka’s The Trial? At first Jeanne throws herself into research with great enthusiasm, but as time goes by, it becomes clear that things aren’t quite going according to plan.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
ISBN: 9780007351053
Publication Date: 2010-04-01
An exquisitely beautiful young man in Victorian England retains his youthful and innocent appearance over the years while his portrait reflects both his age and evil soul as he pursues a life of decadence and corruption.

The Queue

The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz; Elisabeth Jaquette (Translator)
ISBN: 9781612195162
Publication Date: 2016-05-24
In a surreal, but familiar, vision of modern day Egypt, a centralized authority known as ‘the Gate’ has risen to power in the aftermath of the ‘Disgraceful Events,’ a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate in order to take care of even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the Gate never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist,

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
ISBN: 9780156034029
Publication Date: 2008-04-14
A young Muslim American, Changez is living the American dream, with an education at an Ivy League college, high-paying job, and romance with Erica, a member of the elite New York social circles, until the events of September 11th turn his life upside down and force him to confront his personal allegiances.

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death by Albert Camus; Justin O'Brien (Translator, Introduction by)
ISBN: 9780679764014
Publication Date: 1995-08-29
A collection of twenty-three political essays selected by the author from his Actuelles and other works. Camus addresses issues that range from colonial warfare in Algeria to the social cancer of capital punishment.

The Three-body Problem

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu; Ken Liu (Translator)
ISBN: 9780765382030
Publication Date: 2016-01-12
Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project's signal is received by an alien civilization on the brink of destruction, which plans to invade Earth; meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

Ulysses

Ulysses by James Joyce; Jeri Johnson (Editor)
ISBN: 9780199535675
Publication Date: 2011-09-01
A day in the life of Leopold Bloom, whose odyssey through the streets of turn-of-the-century Dublin leads him through trials that parallel those of Ulysses on his epic journey home.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Wild Swans by Jung Chang
ISBN: 9780743246989
Publication Date: 2003-08-12
Traces three generations of a family in twentieth-century China, during which a warlord's concubine, a powerful Communist Party member, and a Cultural Revolution survivor witness Mao's impact on their nation and their livelihoods.

Summer Reading 2018: List A - Perspectives from World Authors