In order of their being submitted:
Submitted by Alice--
In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul
1971
120 pages (novella only)
Booker Prize winner. This grouping of two short stories, a short novel within a prologue and an epilogue from Naipaul's travel journals, is held together by Naipaul's pervading concern with the themes of exile, freedom and prejudice. The short novel titled "In a Free State" is about expatriate English civil servants in a recently independent African state torn by civil war. I'm recommending that we read and discuss the novella titled "In a Free State", 1971, 120 pages. (Entire book collection is 256 pages.)
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
1969
224 Pages
Vonnegut himself considers Slaughterhouse 5 to have been a "work-in-progress" for the 24 years prior to its publication, as it is the "great anti-war novel" he was determined to write ever since his release from a German POW camp at the end of WWII, during which time he witnessed (and obviously survived) the allied fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945. The experiences of protagonist Billy Pilgrim as a POW fairly accurately portray Mr. Vonnegut's own.
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Submitted by Susan --
Lolita by Nabokov
1955
317 Pages
From the Publisher:
"Awe and exhiliration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation."
Gutenberg Elegies by Birkerts
1995
231 pages
From Publisher's Weekly:
In this engaging, cautionary look at the impact of modern technology on literary tradition, critic Birkerts warns that the information superhighway poses dire challenges to the vitality of literary criticism. In 15 original essays on the art of reading and the rise of electronic communication, he contends that emerging information technologies, such as the Internet and interactive TV, will result in the erosion of language, a diminishing interest in sustained critical thought and a negligence of the traditional humanities.
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Submitted by Mary --
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
2003
384 pages
From Publisher's Weekly:
This ... memoir details Nafisi's clandestine meetings with seven hand-picked young women, who met in her home during the two-year period before she left Iran to read and discuss classic Western novels like Lolita, The Great Gatsby, and Pride and Prejudice.
From New York Times:
It is a thoughtful account of the novels they studied together and the unexpected parallels they drew between those books and their own experiences as women living under the unforgiving rule of the mullahs. And it is, finally, an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction — on the refuge from ideology that art can offer to those living under tyranny, and art's affirmative and subversive faith in the voice of the individual"
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitgerald
1934
315 pages
Fitzgerald's classic story of psychological disintegration was denounced by many as an unflattering portrayal of Sara and Gerald Murphy (in the guise of characters Dick and Nicole Driver), who had been generous hosts to many expatriates.
Only after Fitzgerald's death was Tender Is the Night recognized as a powerful and moving depiction of the human frailties that affect privileged and ordinary people alike.
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Submitted by Kelly --
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
By: Gregory Maguire
1995
406 pages
Described in some places on the web as cult fiction, this is Maguire's first book for adults. The author has won awards though none that are major. John Updike, no less, from the New Yorker, has called this an amazing novel.
"Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability; and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil."
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Submitted by Connie --
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
224 pages
2001
From the publisher:
"At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C. S. Lewis gives us the correspondence of the worldly-wise old devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man."
Short Story titled Two Shores by Carlos Fuentes
40 pages
1994
From a short story collection titled The Orange Tree
as well as included in the Clashes of Culture Great Books
Anniversary Series.
From a summary on the web:
The main connection between these five stories is really Fuentes playing - and having whimsical fun - with history. In The Two Shores, for example, he describes how Cortes finds a Spanish sailor who was stranded in Mexico for several years before Cortes's arrival and who speaks the Indian languages fluently. The joke, however, is that the sailor, Jeronimo de Aguilar, respects the locals and loathes Cortes's goal of conquest and deliberately mistranslates much of what Cortes says."
Availability: many copies of The Orange Tree available in the library back to Central Market Book Club Home
Last Revised: December 29, 2004
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