masterpieces: a selection of 20 favorite novels
Explore 20 favorite masterpiece novels in this curated selection of timeless classics and must-read books for every literature lover.
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Perfume
by Patrick Suskind
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠Set in eighteenth-century France, the classic novel that provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one manâs indulgence in his greatest passionâhis sense of smellâleads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime giftâan absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouilleâs genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the âultimate perfumeââthe scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. Translated from the German by John E. Woods.
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Atonement
by Ian McEwan
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prizeâwinning, internationally bestselling author. On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a momentâs flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Ceciliaâs childhood friend. But Brionyâs incomplete grasp of adult motivesâtogether with her precocious literary giftsâbrings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crimeâs repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece. Donât miss Ian McEwanâs new novel, Lessons.
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An Equal Music
by Vikram Seth
The author of the international bestseller A Suitable Boy returns with a powerful and deeply romantic tale of two gifted musicians. Michael Holme is a violinist, a member of the successful Maggiore Quartet. He has long been haunted, though, by memories of the pianist he loved and left ten years earlier, Julia McNicholl. Now Julia, married and the mother of a small child, unexpectedly reenters his life and the romance flares up once more. Against the magical backdrop of Venice and Vienna, the two lovers confront the truth about themselves and their love, about the music that both unites and divides them, and about a devastating secret that Julia must finally reveal. With poetic, evocative writing and a brilliant portrait of the international music scene, An Equal Music confirms Vikram Seth as one of the world's finest and most enticing writers.
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The Collector
by John Fowles
"A superb novel...Evil has seldom been so sinister." --Time Hailed as the first modern psychological thriller, The Collector is the internationally bestselling novel that catapulted John Fowles into the front rank of contemporary novelists. This tale of obsessive love--the story of a lonely clerk who collects butterflies and of the beautiful young art student who is his ultimate quarry--remains unparalleled in its power to startle and mesmerize. "A bravura first novel...As a horror story, this book is a remarkable tour de force." --New Yorker
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The Elementary Particles
by Michel Houellebecq
An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novelâpart Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.
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Embers
by Sandor Marai
Originally published in 1942 and now rediscovered to international acclaim, this taut and exquisitely structured novel by the Hungarian master Sandor Marai conjures the melancholy glamour of a decaying empire and the disillusioned wisdom of its last heirs. In a secluded woodland castle an old General prepares to receive a rare visitor, a man who was once his closest friend but who he has not seen in forty-one years. Over the ensuing hours host and guest will fight a duel of words and silences, accusations and evasions. They will exhume the memory of their friendship and that of the Generalâs beautiful, long-dead wife. And they will return to the time the three of them last sat together following a hunt in the nearby forest--a hunt in which no game was taken but during which something was lost forever. Embers is a classic of modern European literature, a work whose poignant evocation of the past also seems like a prophetic glimpse into the moral abyss of the present
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
A story of friendship through adversity, faith and destiny, and the search for God.
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History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
Sixty years after a book's publication, its author remembers his lost love and missing son, while a teenage girl named for one of the book's characters seeks her namesake, as well as a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.
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Portnoy's Complaint
by Philip Roth
The groundbreaking novel from the Pulitzer Prizeâwinning author of American Pastoral that originally propelled its author to literary stardom: told in a continuous monologue from patient to psychoanalyst, this masterpiece draws us into the turbulent mind of one lust-ridden young Jewish bachelor named Alexander Portnoy. One of The Atlanticâs Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years âDeliciously funny . . . absurd and exuberant, wild and uproarious . . . a brilliantly vivid reading experienceââThe New York Times Book Review âTouching as well as hilariously lewd . . . Roth is vibrantly talentedââNew York Review of Books Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. "The Puzzled Penis," Internationale Zeitschrift fĂźr Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.
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The Secret History: A Read with Jenna Pick
by Donna Tartt
A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK ⢠ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME ⢠INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠A contemporary literary classic and "an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prizeâwinning author of The Goldfinch. One of The Atlanticâs Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality. âA remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment . . . Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.â âThe New York Times
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides ⢠Nominated as one of Americaâs best-loved novels by PBSâs The Great American Read Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wildeâs story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the authorâs most popular work. The tale of Dorian Grayâs moral disintegration caused a scandal when it ďŹrst appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novelâs corrupting inďŹuence, he responded that there is, in fact, âa terrible moral in Dorian Gray.â Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wildeâs homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Grayâs relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, âBasil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to beâin other ages, perhaps.â