Shreya's Treasures

"I looked up at the mass of signs  and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign difference of the world." THE OUTSIDER ( THE STRANGER ) ALBERT CAMUS FIRST PUBLISHED : 1942 GENRE : Novel, Crime Fiction, Philosophical Fiction, Absurdist Fiction, Existential Fiction The Outsider (previously translated from the French, L’Étranger, as The Stranger) is Albert Camus’ most widely known work, and shows his understanding of Absurdism. Camus utilized The Stranger as a platform for this concept and his questions about the meaning of life. There are a number of elements that are of interest in The Outsider, but most significant is the issue of the protagonist, Meursault, and how he, and his story, represent the philosophies that are portrayed in the novel.  Meursault, the major protagonist of The Outsider is shown as a self-absorbed man in the beginning but ultimately emerges to be a man of truth.  Meursault lives a quiet life of rou...

KAFKA ON THE SHORE HARUKI MURAKAMI GENRE: MAGICAL REALISM, FANTASY, NOVEL FIRST PUBLISHED: 2002 "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution ta kes will be dif ferent for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write"                                     - H. Murakami It is easier to be bewitched by Haruki Murakami's fiction than to figure out how he accomplishes the bewitchment. His narrators tend to be a bit passive, and the stakes in many of his shaggy-dog plots remain obscure. Yet the undercurrent is nearly irresistible, and readers emerge several hundred pages later as if from a trance, more curious tha...

THE GREAT GATSBY GENRE : SATIRE, TRAGEDY, BIOGRAPHICAL FICTION F. SCOTT. FITZGERALD FIRST PUBLISHED : 1925 "This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air." The Great Gatsby, The Great American Novel, is F Scott Fitzgerald's ultra-modernist novel about jazz-age America. The novel tells the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth, which ultimately led to his own destruction. It's highly unreliable protagonist is Nick Carraway, who recounts his story of the two years he spent with Gatsby. Almost 90 years later after its publish, The Great Gatsby is regularly named one of the greatest novels ever written in English, and has annu...

THE SWIMMER JOHN CHEEVER GENRE : ALLEGORICAL FICTION  FIRST PUBLISHED : 1964 “A masterpiece of mystery, language and sorrow. It starts out, on a perfect summer morning, as the record of a splendid exploit... and ends up as a kind of ghost story.” — Michael Chabon on The Swimmer Cheever, "the Chekhov of the suburbs", wrote this story when alcohol had started to take over him in his early fifties. A masterful blend of fantasy and reality, it chronicles a middle-aged man’s gradual acceptance of the truth that he has avoided facing—that his life is in ruins. The story immediately became an object of fascination in literary circles for its surprising blend of realism and surrealism and the emotional punch it delivers. Neddy Merrill "Ned", a man with the “vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure”, one day inexplicably decides to “swim home” via a trail of his neighbours’ pools. The people he interacts with on this bizarre odyssey include form...

A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORMOUS WINGS GENRE : MAGICAL REALISM, FICTION GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ  FIRST PUBLISHED : 1955 “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” was first published in the pages of the New American Review (1955), much before the majority of his work and twelve years before One Hundred Years of Solitude, probably the most familiar of his stories. What we have here is a children’s story about a place warped by sadness and visited by a distressed, lost Daedalus. Yet its vibrant colour is all its own. It is a story deeply overlapping the febrile plenitude of fiction’s strangeness and the complex relationship we, as humans, have with each other. Like so much of Márquez’s writing the story aches with a luxurious language of sadness and beauty.  "He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings” We are introduced to a world ...

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN FIRST PUBLISHED : 1892 “ The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman, written in a diary form, who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of belief. We here get inside the mind of a troubled lady who soon enters a state of madness. "I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write_ a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.But I find I get pretty tired when I try.It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work."  The use of imagery and setting helps illustrate this theme throughout the story. The setting of the vast colonial mansion and particularly the nursery room with barred windows provides an image of loneliness and seclusion experienced by the protagonist. The way the wallpaper of the room is described throughout the story fills the reader with a sense of eeriness. "The color is repellent, almost revolting ; a smoldering...

THE METAMORPHOSIS FRANZ KAFKA FIRST PUBLISHED:1915 “Father. You must just try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we’ve believed it for so long is the root of all our trouble.”  ‘Metamorphosis’ is one of Franz Kafka’s known works. Written from the vantage point of Gregor Samsa, Kafka provides readers with an individual’s sudden transformation into a vermin and the corresponding impact it has on his family, identity and state of consciousness. His family is forced to adjust lives to accommodate to living with a human-sized insect in the house. In The Metamorphosis, Kafka explores the four stages of isolation through symbolism, plot, and contrasting characterizations of Gregor and his family. One of the many symbols is a picture that hangs on Gregor’s wall. Kafka describes Gregor’s surroundings in great detail, making sure to include a lengthy depiction of a cut out picture of a lady “sitting upright, dressed in a fur hat and fur boa” . The lady sits, ...

JOJO RABBIT DIRECTOR  :  TAIKA WAITITI RELEASE : 2019 Creating a World War II comedy-drama that counts on getting laughs about one of history’s greatest monsters is a big swing. But Waititi uses this humor to illustrate how easily fascism feeds off human flaws.The shift in tone comes when the film stops focusing on the banal and showcases the brutal horrors of the situation. Beneath the fanaticism, Jojo(Roman Griffin Davis) is a frightened boy whose sister has died and whose father has disappeared in battle. But his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), has a secret: she’s a covert anti-fascist who is hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), in the attic. When Jojo stumbles upon Elsa, he is initially horrified, believing her to be a monster. But gradually the pair strike up a love-hate relationship that infuriates Imaginary Adolf and causes Jojo to start to rethink his allegiances.The film’s dramatic focus is how Jojo deals with this sprightly J...

THE ALCHEMIST PAULO COELHO FIRST PUBLISHED: 1988 "My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," The boy tells the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. The alchemist replies "Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse that the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a seconds' encounter with God and Eternity." We too easily give up on our dreams, yet the universe is always ready to help us fulfill them. Paulo Coelho paints the reader's mind with surreal settings, a fascinating story-line, and a simple style of writing full of meaningful insights that will leave the reader feeling warm-hearted, inspired, and ready to shoot for the stars. The settings in this book are so vividly described that the reader can feel the lush, cool grasses of the Andalusian fields; the soft glow and warmth emanating from the buildings of the town...

ANNA KARENINA LEO TOLSTOY FIRST PUBLISHED: 1878 “All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” We all have books that imprint a lasting memory on us, not simply for the entertainment value, but rather for the way in which they communicate the truth of the human person. For me, Tolstoy’s  Anna Karenina  is an exemplar in character development and as such presents an unparalleled disclosure of the human condition and the effects of both sin and virtue in the life of man.  The story follows four individuals arranged as couples.  The first, for whom the novel is named, is Anna.  When she comes on the scene, she is nothing short of captivating: beautiful and mysterious in every way.  Anna is married, albeit unhappily.  As the story progresses, she falls into an illicit affair with the young Count Vronsky, who pursues her with both intensity and persistence.  The third is a young woman named Ki...

MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION SALMAN R USHDIE FIRST PUBLISHED: 1981 Salman Rushdie was knighted due to his literary work and this career of his started with Midnight’s children, his second novel. It was ground-breaking in its treatment of history, memory, and fantasy. Rushdie used all three avenues in a compendious effort to grapple with the history of India just before and thirty years after it gained independence from the British. It is the biography of Saleem Sinai, a child with psychic and (later) olfactory powers, born on the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. His destiny is inextricably linked with that of India (this gets reflected in the entire story), the country that gained independence at the exact same time as he did. Saleem quickly establishes himself as an unreliable narrator; he makes factual errors and tells lies. However, he is a very engaging and endearing storyteller because of his humor , his sense of foreshadowing, his uni...

LOLITA EROTIC LITERATURE, TRAGICOMEDY VLADIMIR NABOKOV FIRST PUBLISHED: 1955 Vladimir Nabokov is probably one of the very few writers who wrote a book which is so shocking yet remains to be a  favorite  among the readers. Lolita, his disturbing masterpiece, revolves around the story of middle aged Humbert Humbert, and his tragic love story with his 12 year old step daughter. What's interesting is, the entire novel has been written considering H. H 's opinions - his feelings, his thoughts, his actions, his introspection. Not once has Nabokov mentioned about what Lolita feels, what is she going through, or what she actually thinks of her relationship with her stepfather. As a consequence, we know Humbert is wrong(evil so as to say) , but we also know that he knows he is wrong(he considers himself a murderer in fact).So we actually hate him and also strangely develop a sense of pity for him (due to his childhood incident) at the end of the novel when Lolit...