Cultural genre books (420)


361.

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe EN

Rating: 3 (4 votes)
Country: Europe / Germany flag Germany
Description:
"Be on your guard … and take care not to fall in love!" Visiting an idyllic German village, Werther, a sensitive and romantic young man, meets and falls in love with sweet-natured Lotte. Although he realizes that Lotte is to marry Albert, he is unable to subdue his passion for her and his infatuation torments him to the point of absolute despair. The first great ‘confessional’ novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther draws both on Goethe’s own unrequited love for Charlotte Buff and on the death of his friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem. The book was an immediate success and a cult rapidly grew up around... continue

362.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner EN

Rating: 5 (4 votes)
Description:
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century is the story of a family of Southern aristocrats on the brink of personal and financial ruin. • The definitive corrected text, including Faulkner's Appendix One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history... continue

363.

The Squatter and the Don by María Amparo Ruiz de Burton EN

0 Ratings
Description:
The Squatter and the Don, originally published in San Francisco in 1885, is the first fictional narrative written and published in English from the perspective of the conquered Mexican population that, despite being granted the full rights of citizenship under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848, was, by 1860, a subordinated and marginalized national minority.

364.

The Storyteller's Secret by Sejal Badani EN

Rating: 4.5 (2 votes)
Country: Asia / India flag India
Description:
Nothing prepares Jaya, a New York journalist, for the heartbreak of her third miscarriage and the slow unraveling of her marriage in its wake. Desperate to assuage her deep anguish, she decides to go to India to uncover answers to her family's past.

365.

The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / Malaysia flag Malaysia
Description:
Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Hooper is newly married to a rich and charming widower, eager to join him on his tea plantation, determined to be the perfect wife and mother. But life in Ceylon is not what Gwen expected. The plantation workers are resentful, the neighbours treacherous. And there are clues to the past - a dusty trunk of dresses, an overgrown gravestone in the grounds - that her husband refuses to discuss. Just as Gwen finds her feet, disaster strikes. She faces a terrible choice, hiding the truth from almost everyone, but a secret this big can't stay buried forever . . .

366.

The Testament by Elie Wiesel EN

0 Ratings
Country: Europe / Romania flag Romania
Description:
Grisha Kossover, arriving in Russia in 1972, twenty years after his father, poet Paltiel Kossover, was executed by Stalin, is finally able to read the written testament his parent left behind and finds that it illuminates the shadowed places of his own life.

367.

The Tilting House by Ivonne Lamazares EN

0 Ratings
Country: North America / Cuba flag Cuba
Description:
Two estranged sisters with a complicated past and an acrimonious present reunite in 1990s Cuba to confront the riddle of family amid the scars of political upheaval In the summer of 1993, Yuri, a teenage orphan, is living with her strict, religious aunt Ruth in a Havana suburb when Mariela, a thirty-four-year-old artist, arrives from the United States with a shocking revelation. She claims to be Yuri's sister, insisting that she and Yuri share a mother, and that Ruth essentially kidnapped her when she sent her into exile against her will through Operation Pedro Pan. Forced to grow up in orphan... continue

368.

The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Asia / Turkey flag Turkey
Description:
This is the story of the misadventures of Hayri Irdals, an unforgettable antihero who, along with an eccentric cast of characters (a television mystic, a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman empire, the 'life-artist' Halit), founds The Time Regulation Institute. The institute's quixotic quest: to make sure all the clocks in Turkey are set to Western time. Thus begins a brilliant satire about the calamitous arrival of Western and corporate values in tradition-bound Turkey.

369.

The Turtle House by Amanda Churchill EN

0 Ratings
Description:
"A heartbreakingly resonant debut, The Turtle House is a tender, big-hearted story about women, family, and the complicated history of Texas. These characters, and their tentative, flawed stumblings toward grace, will stay with me."--Elizabeth Wetmore, author of Valentine "Sweeping yet intimate, Amanda Churchill's Turtle House spans cultures and continents. Minnie and her granddaughter Lia are unforgettable protagonists, whose grit and grace will inspire you. Together, they find a way through in this gripping debut."--Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City Moving between late 1990s small-town T... continue

370.

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / Sweden flag Sweden
Description:
‘I liked The Unit very much... I know you will be riveted, as I was.’ Margaret Atwood ‘Echoing work by Marge Piercy and Margaret Atwood, The Unit is as thought-provoking as it is compulsively readable.’ Jessica Crispin, NPR.org Ninni Holmqvist’s eerie dystopian novel envisions a society in the not-so-distant future where men and women deemed economically worthless are sent to a retirement community called the Unit. With lavish apartments set amongst beautiful gardens and state-of-the-art facilities, elaborate gourmet meals, and wonderful music and art, they are free of financial worries and wa... continue