Literature & Fiction

文学与小说

Novels, drama, and poetry — understanding the human condition through narrative.

47 books

The Feast of the Goat 《公羊的节日》 Mario Vargas Llosa The grotesque spectacle and collapse of a dictator's rule. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

A Luminous Republic 《光明共和国》 Andrés Barba The order of white civilization and the fear of what lies outside it. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

The Conformist 《同流者》 Alberto Moravia An ordinary man drifts into complicity with tyranny. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Animal Farm 《动物农场》 George Orwell A political fable, and a critique of central planning. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Runaway 《逃离》 Alice Munro Nobel-winning stories about women who run away and the predicaments they face. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Chance 《机缘》 Alice Munro A woman scholar, femininity, and the paradox of reason. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Beneath the Wheel 《在轮下》 Hermann Hesse A repressive school system and the souls it tames. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Demian 《德米安（彷徨少年时）》 Hermann Hesse Spiritual awakening, self-awareness, and learning to think for oneself. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

The Kiss to the Leper 《给麻风病人的吻》 François Mauriac The misery of a traditional marriage, and a portrait of human nature. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

The Desert of Love 《爱的荒漠》 François Mauriac A Nobel laureate's study of a broken family and the scarcity of love. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Genitrix 《母亲大人》 François Mauriac Victims of patriarchy and a twisted bond between mother and son. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Thérèse Desqueyroux 《苔蕾丝·德斯盖鲁》 François Mauriac A French classic about a wife who poisons her husband, and the mind behind it. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Never Let Me Go 《莫失莫忘（别让我走）》 Kazuo Ishiguro A dystopia about clones making peace with a society that harvests them. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

The Wall 《隐墙》 Marlen Haushofer Solitude behind an invisible wall, and the psychology of the Cold War. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

The Moon and Sixpence 《月亮与六便士》 W. Somerset Maugham Ideals against reality, and the line between genius and ordinary life. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Accidental Death of an Anarchist 《一个无政府主义者的意外死亡》 Dario Fo A political farce aimed at the machinery of the state and its power. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Giovanni's Room 《乔瓦尼的房间》 James Baldwin Marginal life and sexual repression among gay men in Paris. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Greek Lessons 《失语者》 Han Kang A Nobel laureate's novel of lost language and inward searching. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

A Happy Death 《快乐的死》 Albert Camus Camus's first novel on the void of existence and the impulse to rebel. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Ward No. 6 《第六病室》 Anton Chekhov Intellectuals under despotism, caught between resistance and resignation. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

The Tartar Steppe 《鞑靼人沙漠》 Dino Buzzati Political melancholy, rumour, and the slow drain of an empty daily life. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Fear 《恐惧》 Stefan Zweig A psychological thriller of adultery and manipulative control. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Simple Passion 《简单的激情》 Annie Ernaux A Nobel laureate's autofiction of desire and personal memory. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

The Persian Boy 《波斯少年》 Mary Renault Alexander the Great's campaigns seen through the eyes of a Persian eunuch. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

A Whole Life 《大雪将至（完整的一生）》 Robert Seethaler One ordinary man's quiet, complete life. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Bloodchild 《血孩子》 Octavia E. Butler An award-winning sci-fi tale of submission and parasitic power. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

The Lost Daughter 《暗处的女儿》 Elena Ferrante Deconstructing motherhood, and a woman's loss of her own self. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

By Night in Chile 《智利之夜》 Roberto Bolaño An intellectual's cowardice, evasion, and complicity with a regime. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Tokyo Refugees 《一个贫穷的年轻人》 Tetsuzo Fukuzawa Youth poverty and the psychological damage it leaves behind. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

老妓抄《老妓抄》 Kanoko Okamoto Taisho-era Japanese aesthetics and a woman's point of view. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

The Hunger Angel 《呼吸秋千》 Herta Müller A Nobel laureate's account of survival in a wartime labour camp. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Digenis Akritas 《狄吉尼斯·阿克里特》 anonymous A Byzantine frontier epic of the clash between Christianity and Islam. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Slaughterhouse-Five 《五号屠场》 Kurt Vonnegut The Dresden bombing and a blackly comic stand against war. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

A Canticle for Leibowitz 《莱博维兹的赞歌》 Walter M. Miller Jr. Post-apocalyptic sci-fi on the cycle of civilization and forgotten history. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Oresteia 《俄瑞斯忒亚三部曲》 Aeschylus A classic mythic tragedy of civic law and ethical conflict. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Divan of Hafez 《设拉子夜莺》 Hafez Persian lyric poetry and the expression of the inner life. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

外面是夏天《外面是夏天》 Kim Ae-ran Realist fiction about ordinary lives in contemporary Korea. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

梨子小姐与自己相处《梨子小姐与自己相处》 bai-lu Refusing mental burnout, and learning to live at peace with oneself. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Assemblywomen 《公民大会妇女》 Aristophanes A classical comedy imagining Athens without private property. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Heart of Darkness 《黑暗的心》 Joseph Conrad Colonial plunder and the shattering of a grand narrative. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Letter to a Child Never Born 《给一个未能出生的孩子的信》 Oriana Fallaci The nature of motherhood, existentialism, and an argument for life. Literature & Fiction AZM's list

Iliad & Odyssey 《荷马史诗（伊利亚特奥德赛）》 Homer The wrath of Achilles and Odysseus's long voyage, the source of Western literature. Literature & Fiction XMS's list

Aeneid 《埃涅阿斯纪》 Virgil An epic of duty, as Aeneas carries a divine command to found a nation. Literature & Fiction XMS's list

Ars Amatoria 《爱经（爱的艺术）》 Ovid A Roman poem on courtship and love, once banned for its candour. Literature & Fiction XMS's list

Satyricon 《萨蒂利孔》 Petronius A picaresque satire of excess and luxury in Nero's Rome. Literature & Fiction XMS's list

The Decameron 《十日谈》 Giovanni Boccaccio Plague-time tales that mock a corrupt Church and celebrate human wit. Literature & Fiction XMS's list

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 《恰尔德·哈罗尔德游记》 Lord Byron A Byronic wanderer's travels and his longing for liberty and revolt. Literature & Fiction XMS's list

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