18 books like Madame Bovary
Lolita
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he sexually molests after he becomes her stepfather. "Lolita" is his private nickname for Dolores.…
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Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.
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The Plague
From the Publisher: From one of the most brilliant and influential thinkers of the twentieth century-two novels, six short stories, and a pair of essays in a single volume. In both his essays and his fiction, Albert Camus (1913-1960) deployed his lyric eloquence in defense against despair, providing an affirmation of the brave assertion of humanity in the face of a universe devoid of order or…
Shares: French fiction, French literature
The Good Soldier
This is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy - or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove's with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about…
Shares: Middle class, Adultery, Social life and customs, History
Adolphe
Adolphe is a privileged and refined young man, bored by the stupidity he perceives in the world around him. After a number of meaningless conquests, he at last encounters Ellenore, a beautiful and passionate older woman. Adolphe is enraptured and gradually wears down her resistance to his declarations of love. But as they embark on an intense and tortured affair, Ellenore gives way to a flood of…
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The Man of Property
The first book of the Forsyte Saga, initially published in 1906 (the second was not published until 1921). Here the reader is introduced to the large Forsyte clan, with special attention paid to the rapacious Soames who’s urge to possess includes his beautiful wife Irene, who he eventually alienates by his jealous and grasping nature.
Shares: Middle class, Social life and customs
Adler und Engel
Liebesgeschichte, Kriminalroman, Entwicklungsgeschichte, Politthriller furios zu einem Roman verwoben - das ist das Buch von Juli Zeh, einem der überragenden Talente der deutschen Literatur. Für ihre Geschichte um den Völkerrechtsexperten Max, der nach dem Selbstmord seiner einzigen Liebe Jessie ins Bodenlose stürzt, wurde die Autorin mit dem Deutschen Bücherpreis, mit dem Rauriser Literaturpreis…
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Rachel Ray
"Rachel Ray is an 1863 novel by Anthony Trollope. It recounts the story of a young woman who is forced to give up her fiancé because of baseless suspicions directed toward him by the members of her community, including her sister and the pastors of the two churches attended by her sister and mother" --
Shares: Middle class, Manners and customs, Social life and customs
La chartreuse de Parme
Headstrong and naive, the young Italian aristocrat Fabrizio del Dongo is determined to defy the wrath of his right-wing father and go to war to fight for Napoleon. He stumbles on the Battle of Waterloo, ill-prepared, yet filled with enthusiasm for war and glory. Finally heeding advice, Fabrizio sneaks back to Milan, only to become embroiled in a series of amorous exploits, fuelled by his…
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Sous l'acacia d'Occident
In the final novel in the bestselling series, Christian Jacq writes of the Hittite king who wants Ramses to marry his daughter, while revolt is brewing among the revenge-driven Libyans.
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Notre Dame de Paris
In fifteenth-century Paris, a disfigured man named Quasimodo, who was abandoned as an infant in the cathedral of Notre-Dame and now lives in its bell tower, must come to the aid of a beautiful gypsy girl named Esmeralda after she repels the advances of the cruel archdeacon Don Claude Frollo.
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Анна Каренина
Described by William Faulkner as the best novel ever written and by Fyodor Dostoevsky as “flawless,” Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of…
Shares: Adultery, Married women, Social life and customs, History
La Chute
Num bar de marinheiros em Amesterdão, um homem que se apresenta como juiz-penitente enceta conversa com um desconhecido. Entre copos de Genebra e deambulações pelas ruas daquela cidade de canais concêntricos, a fazer lembrar os círculos do inferno, recorda a sua vida passada como respeitável advogado parisiense, insuperável na defesa de causas nobres e nas conquistas amorosas. Mas à medida que a…
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Works (La chute / L'exil et le royaume)
Shares: French fiction, French literature, Literary Fiction
Shares: French fiction, French literature, Literary Fiction
A Fine Balance
A Fine Balance is Rohinton Mistry's eagerly awaited second novel and follows his critically acclaimed Such a Long Journey, the book that won three prestigious literary awards in 1991.
Set in India in the mid-1970s, A Fine Balance is a richly textured novel which sweeps the reader up into its special world. Large in scope, the narrative focuses on four unlikely people who come together in a flat…
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Les contes drôlatiques
A collection of stories with a mediaeval theme rather after the style of Rabelais. Early editions were illustrated by Gustav Dore and were published by Garnier Freres of Paris. The stories range from the absurd to the downright grim but the illustrations give them a life of their own. Rather off-putting to the reader used to modern French, the stories are written in an archaic French that is not…
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Amelia
Against her mother's wishes, Amelia marries Captain William Booth, a young army officer, and runs away to London. William is unjustly imprisoned in Newgate, and is subsequently seduced by Miss Matthews. Amelia stays faithful to her husband and forgives his transgression, but William soon draws them into trouble again as he accrues gambling debts trying to lift the couple out of poverty.
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MAIN STREET
The first of his major novels of the 1920s, Sinclair Lewis's Main Street satirizes the manners of the American Middle West. Here is the story of Carol Kennicott, who, to be accepted, must adapt to the ways of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. This groundbreaking novel attacks conformism, commercialism, moneygrubbing, and the decline in what Lewis saw as the American ideals of freedom and respect for…
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