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Category: Books

  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in Airstrip One, the former Britain, now a province of the superstate Oceania. He works at the Ministry of Truth altering old newspaper articles so that the historical record always matches the Party's current line. Telescreens watch every room, the Thought Police hunt dissent, and posters of Big Brother look down from every wall.

    Privately, Winston hates the regime. He begins a forbidden diary, dreams of a mysterious brotherhood of resistance, and starts a dangerous secret affair with Julia, a young woman from the Fiction Department. He is also drawn to O'Brien, an Inner Party official he suspects shares his doubts.

    Published in 1949, shortly before Orwell's death, the novel gave the language Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime, the memory hole and Room 101. It is a study of totalitarianism, propaganda, surveillance and the manipulation of truth and language, and it remains a reference point in debates about state power and technology.

    Book details

    AuthorGeorge Orwell
    First published1949
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)328
    SettingLondon, Airstrip One, Oceania, 1984

    Themes

    • Totalitarianism
    • Surveillance
    • Propaganda
    • Truth and language
    • Individual freedom

    Who should read it

    Anyone interested in politics, propaganda and surveillance, and readers who want the defining dystopian novel.

  • Animal Farm

    On Manor Farm in England, the elderly boar Old Major shares a dream with the other animals: a world in which they are free of human masters and keep the fruits of their own labour. Not long afterwards, neglected and hungry, the animals rise up and drive out the drunken farmer Mr Jones, rename their home Animal Farm, and paint seven commandments of equality on the barn wall.

    The cleverest animals, the pigs, take charge of planning. Two of them, Snowball and Napoleon, quarrel over the building of a windmill and the direction of the farm, while the persuasive Squealer explains every new decision to the others. The hardworking cart-horse Boxer, the cynical donkey Benjamin and the sheep with their slogans show how ordinary citizens respond as the rules quietly change.

    Written during the Second World War and published in 1945, the book is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and Stalinism, but its warning about how power corrupts ideals and how language is bent to justify it applies far more widely. Its simple style makes it a common school text.

    Book details

    AuthorGeorge Orwell
    First published1945
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)112
    SettingManor Farm, England

    Themes

    • Corruption of power
    • Revolution
    • Propaganda
    • Totalitarianism
    • Class

    Who should read it

    Readers of any age who want a short, sharp fable about how revolutions can betray their own ideals.

  • The Brothers Karamazov

    Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is a crude, greedy landowner who neglected his sons from two marriages. The eldest, Dmitri, is a passionate, reckless army officer locked in a dispute with his father over money and over the same woman, Grushenka. Ivan is a brilliant intellectual tormented by doubt about God and suffering. Alyosha, the youngest, is a novice at the local monastery under the elder Zosima. A servant, Smerdyakov, rumoured to be Fyodor's illegitimate son, lurks in the household.

    Rising tension between father and sons builds towards a crime and a trial that grip the town. Along the way the novel contains some of Dostoevsky's most famous passages, including Ivan's prose poem about the Grand Inquisitor confronting Christ in Seville, and Zosima's teachings about responsibility and active love.

    Completed in 1880, months before the author's death, it is a philosophical novel, a family drama and a courtroom thriller at once. It explores faith and doubt, free will, moral responsibility and the relationship between fathers and sons, and has influenced writers and thinkers from Freud to Einstein.

    Book details

    AuthorFyodor Dostoevsky
    First published1880
    Original languageRussian
    Translated byRichard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)796
    SettingSkotoprigonyevsk, a provincial Russian town, 1860s

    Themes

    • Faith and doubt
    • Free will
    • Family conflict
    • Moral responsibility
    • Suffering

    Who should read it

    Readers ready for a demanding but rewarding novel that mixes murder mystery with deep philosophical argument.

  • Les Miserables

    In 1815, Jean Valjean is released after nineteen years in the galleys for stealing bread and trying to escape. Shunned everywhere because of his yellow ex-convict's passport, he is taken in by the Bishop of Digne, whose act of mercy after Valjean betrays him changes the course of his life. Years later, under a new name, he has become a prosperous manufacturer and mayor.

    His path crosses that of Fantine, a young factory worker forced into destitution to support her daughter Cosette, who is being exploited by the innkeepers Thenardier. Inspector Javert, who believes the law is absolute, never stops suspecting the mayor's past. The story follows Cosette's growing up in Paris, her love for the student Marius, and the 1832 June Rebellion at the barricades.

    Hugo fills the novel with digressions on the Battle of Waterloo, convents, Parisian slang and the sewers of Paris. Published in 1862, it is a sweeping indictment of poverty and injustice and a meditation on grace, conscience and the law, later adapted into one of the world's most successful musicals.

    Book details

    AuthorVictor Hugo
    First published1862
    Original languageFrench
    Translated byNorman Denny
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)1463
    SettingFrance, 1815-1832

    Themes

    • Redemption
    • Justice and law
    • Poverty
    • Revolution
    • Love and sacrifice

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a sweeping historical epic about mercy, injustice and the poor of nineteenth-century France.

  • The Count of Monte Cristo

    In 1815 Edmond Dantes, a nineteen-year-old merchant sailor from Marseille, is about to be made captain and to marry his beloved Mercedes. Envious rivals frame him as a Bonapartist agent, and an ambitious deputy prosecutor buries the case to protect himself, so Dantes is thrown without trial into the island fortress of the Chateau d'If.

    Years of solitary confinement are broken when he meets the Abbe Faria, an elderly prisoner digging an escape tunnel, who educates him in languages, science and history and tells him of a treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo. When Dantes finally escapes, he reinvents himself as the fabulously wealthy and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo and enters Parisian high society, where his former enemies have prospered.

    Serialised from 1844 to 1846, the novel is a masterpiece of plotting, full of disguises, poisonings, duels, smuggling and buried secrets. Beyond the adventure, it reflects on justice, vengeance, the limits of human judgement and whether revenge can ever truly satisfy. Unabridged editions run well over a thousand pages, but the pace rarely slackens.

    Book details

    AuthorAlexandre Dumas
    First published1844
    Original languageFrench
    Translated byRobin Buss
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)1276
    SettingMarseille, the Chateau d'If, Rome and Paris, 1815-1839

    Themes

    • Revenge
    • Justice
    • Betrayal
    • Identity
    • Hope

    Who should read it

    Readers who love long, twisting adventure stories built on betrayal, disguise and an elaborate plan for revenge.

  • Don Quixote

    An impoverished hidalgo from a village in La Mancha spends so many nights reading tales of chivalry that he loses his grip on reality. Renaming himself Don Quixote, he puts on old armour, mounts his bony horse Rocinante, chooses a peasant woman as his idealised lady Dulcinea, and rides out to right wrongs. He recruits a practical, talkative farm labourer, Sancho Panza, as his squire with the promise of an island to govern.

    Their adventures are a string of comic misunderstandings: windmills seen as giants, flocks of sheep as armies, inns as castles. The first part, published in 1605, also includes interpolated stories of love and intrigue. In the second part, published in 1615, the pair meet characters who have read the first book, and a scheming duke and duchess stage elaborate pranks for their amusement.

    Often called the first modern novel, the book parodies romance while exploring the line between illusion and reality, madness and idealism. The partnership of the dreamer and the realist became one of literature's great double acts. Its influence runs through writers from Fielding and Dickens to Borges and Rushdie, and Edith Grossman's translation made it newly lively for English readers.

    Book details

    AuthorMiguel de Cervantes
    First published1605
    Original languageSpanish
    Translated byEdith Grossman
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)940
    SettingLa Mancha and other regions of Spain, early 17th century

    Themes

    • Illusion and reality
    • Idealism
    • Friendship
    • Chivalry
    • Storytelling

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy comic adventure and want to read the book often called the foundation of the modern novel.

  • The Metamorphosis

    Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman who supports his parents and younger sister with a job he hates, wakes one morning to discover that he has turned into an enormous insect-like creature. His first worries are not about his body but about missing his train and angering his employer, whose chief clerk soon arrives at the family flat to ask why he is late.

    The story then follows how the Samsa household reorganises itself around Gregor, who is confined to his room. His sister Grete at first brings him food and tries to understand what he likes, while his father reacts with violence. As money grows tight, the family takes in lodgers and returns to work, and Gregor listens from behind his door as their feelings toward him shift.

    Kafka tells the bizarre premise in a calm, matter-of-fact style that makes it more unsettling. Published in German in 1915, the novella has been read as a parable of alienation, of the dehumanising effect of work, of family duty and of illness and disability. It is one of the most influential short works of the twentieth century.

    Book details

    AuthorFranz Kafka
    First published1915
    Original languageGerman
    Translated byWilla and Edwin Muir
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)70
    SettingThe Samsa family flat in an unnamed city, early 20th century

    Themes

    • Alienation
    • Family duty
    • Identity
    • Work and dehumanisation
    • Absurdity

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a short, strange and haunting classic that rewards rereading and discussion.

  • The Great Gatsby

    In the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner working in the bond business, rents a small house in West Egg on Long Island. Next door stands a vast mansion where Jay Gatsby, a wealthy man no one seems to know much about, throws extravagant parties every weekend. Across the bay in fashionable East Egg live Nick's cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, a brutish former college football star.

    Nick gradually learns that Gatsby and Daisy knew each other years before, and that the green light at the end of the Buchanans' dock holds special meaning for his neighbour. Through Nick's eyes we meet the golfer Jordan Baker, Tom's mistress Myrtle Wilson and her husband George, who runs a garage in the grim valley of ashes between the suburbs and Manhattan.

    Short and lyrical, the novel is a portrait of the excess of the Roaring Twenties and a critique of the American Dream, class and reinvention. Little noticed on publication in 1925, it is now one of the most widely taught American novels.

    Book details

    AuthorF. Scott Fitzgerald
    First published1925
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)180
    SettingLong Island and New York City, summer 1922

    Themes

    • The American Dream
    • Wealth and class
    • Longing
    • Reinvention
    • Moral decay

    Who should read it

    Readers looking for a short, beautifully written American classic about ambition, money and longing.

  • To Kill a Mockingbird

    Jean Louise Finch, known as Scout, grows up in the sleepy town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression with her older brother Jem and their widowed father, the lawyer Atticus Finch. Their summers are spent with their friend Dill, playing games and daring each other to approach the house of the reclusive neighbour Arthur Radley, known to the children as Boo, about whom wild rumours circulate.

    The children's world changes when Atticus is appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a Black man accused of assaulting a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. As the trial approaches, the Finch family faces hostility from neighbours and classmates, and Scout and Jem begin to see the prejudice and fear beneath their town's polite surface.

    Narrated by an adult Scout recalling her childhood, the novel blends humour and warmth with a serious examination of racial injustice, moral courage and empathy. Published in 1960, at the height of the civil rights movement, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and became a staple of school reading lists, though its treatment of race is now also debated.

    Book details

    AuthorHarper Lee
    First published1960
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)281
    SettingMaycomb, Alabama, 1933-1935
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for Fiction 1961

    Themes

    • Racial injustice
    • Moral courage
    • Childhood
    • Empathy
    • Prejudice

    Who should read it

    Readers of all ages who want a moving, accessible novel about justice and growing up in the American South.

  • Moby-Dick

    The narrator, who asks to be called Ishmael, goes to sea to cure his restlessness and signs on to the whaler Pequod out of Nantucket together with Queequeg, a tattooed Polynesian harpooner he befriends in a New Bedford inn. Once at sea, the reclusive Captain Ahab finally appears on deck, his missing leg replaced by one made of whalebone, and reveals the true purpose of the voyage.

    Ahab is consumed by the desire to kill Moby Dick, the great white sperm whale that maimed him, and he binds the crew to his quest. The first mate Starbuck, a cautious Quaker, questions it; the second and third mates and harpooners from around the world follow. As the ship crosses oceans, encounters with other vessels bring news and omens of the whale.

    Melville interrupts the story with chapters on whale anatomy, the history of whaling, the meaning of whiteness and the workings of the ship, alongside soliloquies written like stage drama. A commercial failure in 1851, the book was rediscovered in the twentieth century and is now considered a cornerstone of American literature.

    Book details

    AuthorHerman Melville
    First published1851
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)635
    SettingNantucket and the oceans of the world, 1840s

    Themes

    • Obsession
    • Fate
    • Man versus nature
    • Good and evil
    • Friendship

    Who should read it

    Patient readers who want an ambitious, digressive American epic about obsession and the sea.