Solzhenitsyn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solzhenitsyn) presents us with a group of cancer patients in a Soviet hospital in 1955. Together they are representative of Russian society of the time. Politics and ideology come under discussion on the ward. It’s the author’s understanding of how patients crumble under the pressure of their disease, though, that gives the novel its power. Vadim, […]
Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Read More »
The eponymous dying man is a former soldier of the Mexican Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Revolution) who has become wealthy and powerful through ‘violence, blackmail, bribery, and brutal exploitation of the workers’. The novel explores the corrupting effects of power and criticizes the distortion of the revolutionaries’ original aims through ‘class domination, Americanization, financial corruption, and failure of
The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes Read More »
Millions of people have watched the star studded 1965 David Lean film adaptation (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059113/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm#cast) with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie (Available on DVD at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Zhivago-DVD-Omar-Sharif/dp/B00005MHNO/ref=pd_sim_b_1.) Why not give this classic a read? A love story set amid the swirling chaos of the Russian Revolution. First published in Italy in 1957 Pasternak’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Pasternak) masterpiece was not allowed to
Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak Read More »
Sixteen year old Vladimir Petrovich has a new neighbour at his parents’ country estate – the beautiful and alluring Zinaida. With hormones racing what’s a boy to do but fall hopelessly in love? Love and passion is a tricky and complex business, though, and Vladimir must undergo some character development before he comes to grips with
First Love by Ivan Turgenev Read More »
Meet school headmaster Mr. Thomas Gradgrind in his grim Northern mill town, Coketown (based on Preston). His mantra is strictly Utilitarian -‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’ Gradgrind approves of nothing but what is ‘severely workful’. Predictably, this approach to life does not enrich or develop the lives of his daughter
Hard Times by Charles Dickens Read More »
Joseph Conrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad) introduces us to Charles Marlow, an ambitious and adventurous sailor who is employed by an English trading company and sent to an African colony. There he travels up the Congo, visiting the trading stations which barter for ivory with the natives. On his journey he is told about a man named Kurtz whose station is the
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This masterpiece of introspection was published by Bellow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bellow) in 1964. The reader is given epistolary revelations in unsent letters from Moses E. Herzog whose life is a failure and whose wife has left him, but who remains defiant and wryly perceptive about the world around him. 368 pages in Penguin Modern Classics edition. ISBN 978-0141184876
Herzog by Saul Bellow Read More »
Huckleberry ‘Huck’ Finn escapes the guardianship of Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson who are trying to ‘civilize’ him, and also subsequently abuse from his alcoholic father ‘Pap’. Setting off down the Mississippi on a raft he teams up with escapee slave Jim. And so the adventures begin. Brought to the screen in 1960
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Read More »
Originally published as ‘A La Recherche du Temps Perdu‘ in 1913. In this opening volume of Proust’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust) masterpiece, the narrator seems at first to be launching a fairly traditional life-story. But after the prelude the narrator travels backwards rather than forwards in time, in order to tell the story of a love affair that
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust Read More »
