Recommendations based on "John Gabriel Borkman"

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR • A DUA LIPA BOOK CLUB PICK“Imagine Call Me By Your Name set in Communist Poland and you'll get a sense of Jedrowski's moving debut about a consuming love affair amidst a country being torn apart.” — O, The Oprah Magazine“Captivating both for its shimmering surfaces and its terrifying depths. Tomasz Jedrowski is a remarkable writer.” — Justin Torres, bestselling author of We the AnimalsSet in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of Communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide—a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of André Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful, natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive Communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly coveted government position. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart, Swimming in the Dark is a potent blend of romance, postwar politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and intense, Tomasz Jedrowski’s indelible and thought-provoking literary debut explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.

Baie jare gelede was Oupa 'n bobaasvlieenier in die Tweede Wereldoorlog. Maar sedertdien is hy na die ouetehuis Twilight Towers toe gestuur waar die onheilspellende matrone Swine die septer swaai. Oupa en sy kleinseun, Jack, moet 'n waaghalsige plan beraam om te ontsnap. Min weet hulle dat die bose matrone hulle fyn dophou ...

This is the story of Aman, as told in his own words - a boy from Afghanistan fleeing the horror of the Afghan war. When a western dog shows up outside the caves where Aman lives with his mother, Aman is initially repulsed - it is not customary for people to keep dogs as pets in his part of the world. But when Aman and his mother finally decide to make a bid for freedom, the dog Aman has called Shadow will not leave their side. Soon it becomes clear: the destinies of boy and dog are linked, and always will be...

The Stranger is a rite of passage for readers around the world. Since its publication in France in 1942, Camus’s novel has been translated into sixty languages and sold more than six million copies. It’s the rare novel that’s as at likely to be found in a teen’s backpack as in a graduate philosophy seminar. If the twentieth century produced a novel that could be called ubiquitous, The Stranger is it.How did a young man in his twenties who had never written a novel turn out a masterpiece that still grips readers more than seventy years later? With Looking for “The Stranger”, Alice Kaplan tells that story. In the process, she reveals Camus’s achievement to have been even more impressive—and more unlikely—than even his most devoted readers knew.Born in poverty in colonial Algeria, Camus started out as a journalist covering the criminal courts. The murder trials he attended, Kaplan shows, would be a major influence on the development and themes of The Stranger. She follows Camus to France, and, making deft use of his diaries and letters, re-creates his lonely struggle with the novel in Montmartre, where he finally hit upon the unforgettable first-person voice that enabled him to break through and complete The Stranger.Even then, the book’s publication was far from certain. France was straining under German occupation, Camus’s closest mentor was unsure of the book’s merit, and Camus himself was suffering from near-fatal tuberculosis. Yet the book did appear, thanks in part to a resourceful publisher, Gaston Gallimard, who was undeterred by paper shortages and Nazi censorship.The initial critical reception of The Stranger was mixed, and it wasn’t until after liberation that The Stranger began its meteoric rise. As France and the rest of the world began to move out of the shadow of war, Kaplan shows, Camus’s book— with the help of an aggressive marketing campaign by Knopf for their 1946 publication of the first English translation—became a critical and commercial success, and Camus found himself one of the most famous writers in the world. Suddenly, his seemingly modest tale of alienation was being seen for what it really was: a powerful parable of the absurd, an existentialist masterpiece.Few books inspire devotion and excitement the way The Stranger does. And it couldn’t have a better biographer than Alice Kaplan, whose books about twentieth-century French culture and history have won her legions of fans. No reader of Camus will want to miss this brilliant exploration.

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.

Jhootha Sach is arguably the most outstanding piece of Hindi literature written about the Partiton. Reviving life in Lahore as it was before 1947, the book opens on a nostalgic note, with vivid descriptions of the people that lived in the city s streets and lanes like Bhola Pandhe Ki Gali: Tara, who wanted an education above marriage; Puri, whose ideology and principles often came in the way of his impoverished circumstances; Asad, who was ready to sacrifice his love for the sake of communal harmony. Their lives and those of other memorable characters are forever altered as the carnage that ensues on the eve of Independence shatters the beauty and peace of the land, killing millions of Hindus and Muslims, and forcing others to leave their homes forever. Published in English translation for the first time, Yashpal s controversial novel is a politically charged, powerful tale of human suffering. Book Reviews An enduring masterpiece of Indian literature Aajkal His ideas and his contribution to Indian literature were . . . revolutionary The Hindu

Few American novels are genuine classics, with a permanent place in our literature. This is one of them. First published in 1939, the story of an average American youth who "survives" World War I armless, legless and faceless with his mind intact was an immediate bestseller. Its anti-war message had a profound effect on Americans during the Vietnam era, and is now being reissued.

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This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1915. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIX DEATH AND BURIAL Albert Benbow was at the front-door. Edwin curbed the expression of his astonishment. "Hello, Albert!" "Oh! You aren't gone to bed?" "Not likely. Come in. What's up?" Albert, with the habit of one instructed never to tread actually on a doorstep lest it should be newly whitened, stepped straight on to the inner mat. He seemed excited, and Edwin feared that he had just learnt of Auntie Hamps's illness and had come in the middle of the night ostensibly to make enquiries, but really to make a grievance of the fact that the Benbows had been "kept in ignorance." He could already hear Albert demanding: "Why have you kept us in ignorance?" It was quite a Benbow phrase. Edwin shut the door and shut out the dark and windy glimpse of the outer world which had emphasised for a moment the tense seclusion of the house. "You've heard of course about the accident to Ingpen?" said Albert. His hands were deep in his overcoat pockets; the collar of the thin, rather shabby overcoat was turned up; an old cap adhered to the back of his head. While talking he slowly lifted his feet one after the other, as though desiring to get warmth by stamping but afraid to stamp in the night. "No, I haven't," said Edwin, with false calmness. "What accident?" The perspective of events seemed to change; Auntie Hamps's illness to recede, and a definite and familiar apprehension to be supplanted by a fear more formidable because it was a fear of the unknown. "It was all in the late special Signal!" Benbow protested, as if his pride had been affronted. "Well, I haven't seen the Signal. What is it?" And Edwin thought: "Is somebody else dying too?" "Fly-wheel broke. Ingpen was inspecting the sliphouse next to the engine-house. Part of the fly-wheel came through and knocked a...

Kressmann Taylor's Address Unknown is a rediscovered classic. Originally published in 1938 - it is now an international bestseller, and reveals the extraordinary power of the pen as a weapon. This is a book that needs to be read.Thanks to word-of-mouth recommendation from reader to reader, Address Unknown has been reprinted 11 times.Short but shattering, it will linger in your memory.Can friendship survive in a divided world? Written on the eve of the Holocaust as a series of letters between a Jew in America and his German friend, Kressmann Taylor's classic novel is a haunting tale of a society poisoned by Nazism. First published in 1938, Address Unknown met with immediate success in English but was banned in Europe by the Nazis. Tragically prescient about what was to come, it was one of the earliest works of fiction to warn against the growing dangers of fascism and antisemitism in Europe. It became an international bestseller and has been translated into more than twenty languages.A novel of enduring impact with a memorable sting in its tail, Address Unknown stands as a powerful reminder of the dangers posed by the rhetoric of intolerance.