- Hieronymous Alloy
- Jan 30, 2009
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Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!
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Morbid Hound
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You can vote for as many of these as you want, but if you vote, and your choice wins, please participate!
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Republic of Wine by Mo Yan - Mo Yan is a Chinese author and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. This one I have read and it is my favorite of his. Follows a few narrative threads including a detective story and fictional letters to Mo Yan by a fellow author and fan, but is largely about corruption and bureaucracy using food and drink a metaphors for greed and excess. I highly recommend it, it is a little heftier at 350 pages but is a page turner IMO so it shouldn't be hard to get through.
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The Plague by Albert Camus.
The Plague (French: La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition. The characters in the book, ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on a populace. . . . The novel has been read as a metaphorical treatment of the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II.[4] Additionally, he further illustrates the human reaction towards the "absurd."[5] The Plague represents how the world deals with the philosophical notion of the Absurd, a theory that Camus himself helped to define.
and a couple from this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/books/review/25-great-books-by-refugees-in-america.html
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Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951)
Country of origin: Germany
Reasons for leaving: In 1933, Arendt, a German Jew, left her country and eventually settled in Paris, where she helped Jewish refugees. Once the Vichy regime took over, she herself was interned as an “enemy alien,” but managed to emigrate and settle in New York in 1941.
Like Adorno and the other German Jewish emigrants of her generation, Arendt was fixated on the question of why democratic institutions collapse and authoritarianism rises. In her major political work, she dissected both Nazism and Stalinism as instantiations of a new type of politics, one that utilized terror and fear to subjugate populations and gain their acquiescence.
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Isabel Allende, “The House of the Spirits” (1982)
Country of origin: Chile
Reasons for leaving: Allende fled to Venezuela in 1973 after the coup that brought down Salvador Allende, the socialist leader and her father’s cousin. She moved to California in the late 1980s.
Drawing on the circumstances of her own exile, Allende used her debut novel to tell a multigenerational saga that takes place in an unnamed country very much like Chile. We see the destruction of democracy and the rise of a cruel dictator who tries to eliminate all opposition. “I wanted to show that life goes in a circle, events are intertwined, and that history repeats itself, there is no beginning and no end,” Allende said about her sprawling, magic-realist narrative.
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1984 by George Orwell
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The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation. The superstate and its residents are dictated to by a political regime euphemistically named English Socialism, shortened to "Ingsoc" in Newspeak, the government's invented language. The superstate is under the control of the privileged elite of the Inner Party, a party and government that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrime", which is enforced by the "Thought Police".[3]
(summary from wikipedia)
See also:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/31/opinions/why-we-read-1984-urbelis-opinion/index.html Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Feb 1, 2017
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Feb 1, 2017 13:07
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May 3, 2024 06:22
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- Rusty
- Sep 28, 2001
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Dinosaur Gum
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I didn't vote for The Plague because I have read it, but I loved it and will read it again if it wins.
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Feb 2, 2017 20:59
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- Groke
- Jul 27, 2007
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New Adventures In Mom Strength
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I have read the Camus, but probably over 20 years ago, so won't mind revisiting.
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Feb 2, 2017 21:31
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- ulvir
- Jan 2, 2005
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darn it I didn't make the poll before it closed. can I just say +1 vote for Mo Yan or something
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Feb 2, 2017 22:06
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May 3, 2024 06:22
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Feb 1, 2017 13:07
