Six brilliant novels about sex, murder, and the meaning of life
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| My favourite here is Vargas Llosa. |
Surprisingly, Kenrick doesn't mean crime when he recommend novels about sex, murder and the meaning of life. I owe my readers some advices for good books and here you are:
A post from from Psycology today by Prof. Douglas T. Kenrick has the whole story. Here is a part:
Junot Diaz: The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao. Diaz is a professor at MIT, but he was born in the Dominican Republic, and his own experiences obviously provide the background for this wonderful story of a nerdy kid from New Jersey with a beautiful rebellious sister, an emotional Dominican mother, and a family curse. The book is full of insights about being an immigrant, and about life in the Dominican Republic (complete with footnotes about the dictator Rafael Trujillo, voodoo, and racist prejudices against Haitians). Oscar Wao’s story is surprisingly funny and shocking at the same time, and the writing is brilliant and evocative.
John Kennedy Toole: A confederacy of dunces. This book is a delight, especially if you ever find yourself feeling the self-righteous intellectual nerd, disdaining the idiotic masses. The story is told through the eyes a character named Ignatius Reilly, who lives in the French Quarter, and who has disdain for modern society, preferring instead the writings of the medieval scholar Boethius. Ignatius is simultaneously the ultimate snob and the ultimate loser, and incidentally one of the funniest characters in modern literature. Toole was an English professor, but he committed suicide after this book, his life’s work, was turned down by several publishers, and he began to descend into alcoholism and paranoia. His mother dedicated herself to getting it published after his death, and finally convinced a reluctant Walker Percy to read it. Percy got it published through LSU press, and it ultimately went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. The title, incidentally, comes from Jonathan Swift’s quote: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
Norman Maclean: A river runs through it. Thirty years ago, I was an assistant professor at Montana State University on my way home to New York to visit my own troubled family, around the time of my younger brother’s tragic death. I chanced to sit next to an old gentleman who was former chair of English at the University of Chicago, who recommended a book by a former colleague – Norman Maclean. Maclean had had an undistinguished career, but published this book just before he retired. A River Runs Through It was based on the true story of Maclean’s own younger brother, who was also something of a lovable troublemaker, and was eventually murdered. This little book is one of the most beautifully written stories I have ever read, combining a deep appreciation of the beauty of Montana with subtle insights about family life. According to the old professor, it was considered for a Pulitzer Prize, and he opined that it should have won. I agree. Having recently read many of the Pulitzer winners of the last 40 or 50 years, I thought this better than many of the winners.
Khaled Hosseini: A Thousand Splendid Suns. This book is simultaneously beautiful and troubling, an eloquently told story about the misfortunes of a woman in Afghanistan whose mother was the mistress of a wealthy man, was turned out by her father’s legitimate family, and married off to a brute living in Kabul. She eventually becomes a friend of his second wife, and the plot takes some fascinating turns. The author is an Afghan refugee, who also wrote the Kite Runner. Like many great works of fiction, Hosseini’s books will teach you something about a place you may never have visited (and in this case, might not want to visit too soon).
Mario Vargas Llosa: The War of the End of the World. Llosa has led an interesting life, including running for president of Peru, and very recently winning the Nobel Prize in literature. This book is a compelling work of historical fiction based on a horrifying event in which the newly formed republican government of Brazil went to war with a town filled with poor people and ex-slaves following a mystic who believed that the Republic was under the control of devil. The Republican soldiers, for their part, believed that the fanatics were under the control of British monarchists. It’s a bit grueling, but like Llosa’s other books, will give you an enlightening perspective on aspects of South American culture unfamiliar to most of us norteamericanos.
Geraldine Brooks: People of the Book. This is another work of historically inspired fiction, written by the author of March (which won a Pulitzer). This is, on the surface, a detective story about a researcher investigating the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illustrated Hebrew manuscript that (in real life) was created in Spain around the time of the Inquisition, and escaped destruction at the hands of Muslims and Nazis to eventually surface in Bosnia. But at a deeper level, it’s a touching and historically well-researched story about the lives and sufferings of the people whose hands it likely passed through.
