1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die

by Boxall, Peter

  With a broad cast of characters, Watchmen shows a humanity in the face of Armageddon. Moore knows the attractions and the pitfalls of comics, and has no time for a simple tale of heroes and villains. In addition to Moore’s narratives, Dave Gibbons’s art can bring a tear to the eye. Today, the term “graphic novel” is both overused and ill-defined. Watchmen remains the standard and the challenge. JS

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  1900s

  Extinction

  Thomas Bernhard

  Lifespan | b. 1931 (Netherlands), d. 1989 (Austria)

  First Published | 1986

  First Published by | Suhrkamp (Frankfurt)

  Original Title | Auslöschung: ein Zerfall

  Thomas Bernhard’s final novel, Extinction, is a powerfully sustained monologue on the subject of family, Austria, the scars of Nazism, and the impossibility of escaping cultural inheritance. It is a final reckoning of the formal and thematic concerns Bernhard worked on throughout his career.

  Franz-Joseph Murau is an Austrian intellectual living in Rome, where he has taken refuge from Austria and his family in the “infinite paradise” of literature and the arts. The novel begins when Murau receives a telegram informing him that his parents and older brother have been killed in a car accident, leaving him heir to the family estate, Wolfsegg. As he prepares to leave for the funeral, he reflects on his family, his hatred for them, and the lack of remorse he feels for their untimely deaths. The second half of the novel takes place at Wolfsegg, where he is forced to confront the burden of individual and collective history. Murau charges both his family and a large part of Austrian society with complicity in Nazi crimes and berates them for their complacent and hypocritical treatment of the past. Declamatory but never self-righteous, Murau is constantly aware of his own failings and the bitter tirades never descend into facile moralizing. Such insistent diatribes form part of a provocative attempt to awaken Austria from its historical amnesia. Far from a parochial concern, his savage indictment of Austria is directed at all forms of repressive dogma, and is an incitement for cultures to remain open to continuous reevaluation. AL

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  1900s

  An Artist of the Floating World

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Lifespan | b. 1954 (Japan)

  First Published | 1986

  First Published by | Faber & Faber (London)

  Whitbread Award | 1986

  An Artist of the Floating World is set in Ishiguro’s birthplace, Nagasaki, following the detonation of the atomic bomb.

  “‘Of course, circumstances oblige us to consider the financial aspect, but this is strictly secondary.’”

  In his second novel, Ishiguro examines the “floating world” of postwar Japan, as it struggles to come to terms with social upheaval and changing cultural values. Told through the personal tale of Masuji Ono, an artist and propagandist for Japanese imperialism during the Second World War, the novel examines the country’s prewar history and the difficulties it faces in coming to terms with the mistakes of the past.

  The story begins three years after Japan’s defeat. Ono’s wife and son have been killed, leaving him to examine his role in the imperialist movement that led the country to disaster. He is involved in negotiations over his younger daughter’s proposed marriage. The groom’s family had abruptly canceled his other daughter’s wedding, a year previously. Ono begins to question whether his artistic support of Imperial Japan has put his daughters’ futures at risk. Yet while he attempts to keep his personal history under wraps, he is reluctant to exchange his prewar values for dubious modern ones.

  Ishiguro, who left Nagasaki aged five and moved to Britain, vividly evokes the time and place of postwar Japan. His style mimics that of classical Japanese literature, the rigid prose reflecting the inflexibility of the aging artist. As in his subsequent novel, The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro creates an essentially expressive individual, who is forced by circumstance to repress his feelings. He writes like the painter of the title, creating a canvas on which his characters are set amid a wealth of intricate details. LE

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  1900s

  Memory of Fire

  Eduardo Galeano

  Lifespan | b. 1940 (Uruguay)

  First Published | 1982–1986

  First Published in | Siglo XXI (Mexico C)

  Original Title | Memoria del fuego

  Eduardo Galeano, an essayist and journalist from Uruguay, took nine years to write the trilogy Memory of Fire, which consisted of Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind. The opus is difficult to define because it is neither a poem, nor a chronicle, nor an essay, nor an anthology, nor a novel, but rather a work inspired by various literary forms. It stands alone as a deeply personal and incisive narrative on the history of the two American continents.

  The story of America is recreated in short, poignant chapters. The line-up of events and political intrigues, told one after another, is breathtaking and awe-inspiring. Each one contributes yet more telling detail to an all-encompassing historical mosaic spanning centuries. Historical figures as disparate as Columbus, Moctezuma, Charles V, Simón Bolívar, Napoleon, Darwin, Washington, Voltaire, Lenin, Allende, Rockefeller, Rigoberta Menchú, Frida Kahlo, Chaplin, and Evita are each given their individual voice and brought to life.

  There is nothing impartial or objective about this work. All the scenes, significant or not, are narrated with ferocity and in full. Unapologetic, Galeano aligns himself with the conquered. He excels in making his readers remember the foundations of modern America, where a rich indigenous past was exchanged for injustice, oppression, poverty and underdevelopment. In 1989, Galeano won the American Book Award for the trilogy, which was hailed as a masterpiece. AK

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  1900s

  The Old Devils

  Kingsley Amis

  Lifespan | b. 1922 (England), d. 1995

  First Published | 1986

  First Published by | Hutchinson (London)

  Booker Prize | 1986

  The Old Devils is regarded as one of Kingsley Amis’s finest novels, and it is the only book to rival 1954’s Lucky Jim in popularity. The targets of Amis’s satire this time are Peter, Charlie, and Malcolm—the “Old Devils”—a close-knit group of aging Welshmen who, along with their wives, spend their lives in idle gossip and drinking.

  When Alun Weaver, a “professional Welshman” and his seductive wife, Rhiannon, appear on the scene, the Old Devils must re-evaluate their way of life and face hard truths about their own standing in the community. As always, Amis’s understated realism and keen eye for the ridiculous minutiae of middle-class life produces a novel that occasionally makes for uncomfortable reading, where any sort of pomposity or pretence is immediately exposed to mockery. Despite this, the reader is also encouraged to feel a grudging sympathy with the curmudgeonly antics of the Old Devils, and it is in this combination that Amis’s talent really lies. This savage comic novel nevertheless contains a strong strain of human sympathy, as the buffoonish characters cannot help but win the reader’s admiration.

  Amis’s writing in the late period of his career has often been criticized for its famous misanthropy and frequently offensive conservatism. In The Old Devils, he exposes the fallacy of this charge, combining the exquisite poise and control of his early satires with a gentleness and genuine humanity that make this novel a pleasure to read. AB

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  1900s

  Matigari

  Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

  Lifespan | b. 1938 (Kenya)

  First Published | 1986

  First Published by | Heinemann (Nairobi)

  Original Language | Kikuyu

  Matigari returns from the mountains, after years of struggle against colonial settlers, to find his country and home bequeathed to the heirs of the opponents he has defeated. But in place of a victorious and proud homecoming, he finds an oppre
ssive and corrupt neocolonial order and an acquiescent population. The struggle for justice must begin again, and Matigari becomes the instigator of various events that, in their retelling, take on the power of myth. Matigari awakens a taste for rumor that loosens the tongues of the poor. Truth and political maneuvering have become difficult to distinguish between, and the president’s “voice of truth,” which blurts incessantly over the radio, is no longer immune from questioning.

  Set “once upon a time, in a country with no name,” Ngugi avoids determinacy of time or place. But in weaving together allusions to recent Kenyan history with pre-independence ideals from the Gikuyu oral traditions, the novel creates a sense of loss and historical obligation alongside a characteristically sharp critique of post-independence Kenya. Some months after the novel’s first publication, intelligence reports in Kenya stated that a figure known as Matigari was traveling across the country preaching about peace and justice. Orders were given for his immediate arrest. The situation uncannily mirrors the last part of the novel, where it is the inability to pin down any meaning to Matigari that prohibits his capture and assimilation. ABi

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  1900s

  Anagrams

  Lorrie Moore

  Lifespan | b. 1957 (U.S.)

  First Published | 1986

  First Published by | Knopf (New York)

  Given Name | Marie Lorena Moore

  This debut novel from one of America’s foremost short-story writers displays all the brilliance of her early stories, only delightfully longer. This is a commonplace fable of ordinary lives confused by the fact that they are not extraordinary. It opens with a mischievous literary anagram. We are given successive versions of the first chapter, each slightly different, shuffled. Details fluctuate and merge until Lorrie Moore comes up with the right one. Not just a self-reflexive trick, the gambit captures the theme of the narrative: the attempts of the characters to rearrange details of their lives, their outlooks, and their partners to create something that makes sense. Benna, alternately, is a nightclub singer, an unemployed aerobics instructor, and an art history professor. In one incarnation she wonders, “perhaps there are really only a few hundred people in the whole world and they all have jobs as other people.” Gerard is her friend, her neighbor, her ex-lover, her student. How do the characters fit their lives and how do they fit their lives best? How do we create ourselves, our lives, to be successful?

  In elaborate yet casual prose, Anagrams is about friendship, connection, barely missed connections, love, and loneliness. The characters try to be a part of things but can’t find the courage to try hard enough. There are no grand evils here, only the careless indignities of everyday life; simple pathos, more of a shrug than a scream. At its heart is Moore’s incisive humor coupled with compassion. GT

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  1900s

  Lost Language of Cranes

  David Leavitt

  Lifespan | b. 1961 (U.S.)

  First Published | 1986

  First Published by | Knopf (New York)

  First UK Edition | 1987, by Viking (London)

  “No matter what he pretended, he knew, he was going where he was going.”

  David Leavitt’s first novel, an impressive debut, explores the terrible secrets that families keep from one another, and the consequences of their discovery. Set in 1980s New York against the terrifying backdrop of the Aids epidemic, the novel recounts the coming out of Philip Benjamin to his parents, Owen and Rose. His disclosure has an immediate impact on their comfortable, settled lives. His mother feels a kind of shocked “grief,” driven by her fear of the sexual danger that her son is to negotiate as a homosexual. For his father, “it is the end of the world.” Confronted by Philip’s “news,” Owen is utterly inconsolable, confused by the upheavel in his family, and overwhelmed by his inability to cope with his own undisclosed homosexuality, realized only in clandestine Sunday afternoon visits to gay porn theaters.

  The novel progresses through Philip’s sexual and emotional development in his relationship with his lover, Eliot, who feels thwarted by the effeminacy of Philip’s desire. Their relationship provides a counterpoint to that of Philip’s parents. By far the most adept aspect of the novel, Leavitt examines the way in which Owen and Rose’s marriage changes once she realizes that they have been living a lie for the last three decades. Without slipping into cliché where other writers might, Leavitt’s assiduous, scrupulous style here conveys the fissures that all too easily appear between generations and within families. VC-R

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  1900s

  The Taebek Mountains

  Jo Jung-rae

  Lifespan | b. 1943 (Korea)

  First Published | 1986

  First Published by | Hangilsa (Seoul)

  Original Title | Taebaek sanmaek

  The Taebek Mountains is a ten-volume epic novel by one of South Korea’s most respected and bestselling writers. It spans a period of Korean history that saw intense ideological conflicts between the political right and left following the establishment of the South Korean government in 1948—these conflicts continued until the end of the Korean War.

  The novel focuses on the fate of Beolgyo, a small town in southwest Korea, focusing on the period from 1948–1950. This proves to be a tumultuous time for ordinary civilians, as control of the town shifts from faction to faction. The struggles are frequently violent: each time the balance of power shifts, it is the townspeople who suffer.

  Within a cast of almost five hundred characters, the saga follows a number of protagonists, including Yeom Sang-ku, a violent inspecter general who takes the lead in ferreting out the leftists; his brother, Yeom San-jin, a leftist military party chairman; Kim Beom Woo, a middle-of-the road anti-Communist; Seo Min-young, a landowner who decides to share his land with his tenants; and So-hwa, a Korean shaman who represents traditional Korean values. The novel skillfully conveys intimate personal dramas played out in a climate of suspicion and terror.

  The Taebek Mountains has sold more than six million copies. Jo has revealed that people often ask him which part of his novels are fiction and which are fact, “I answer with a grin that in a good novel there is no distinction between them.” HO

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  1900s

  Ballad for Georg Henig

  Viktor Paskov

  Lifespan | b. 1949 (Bulgaria)

  First Published | 1987

  First Published in | Bûlgarski pisatel (Sofia)

  Original Title | Balada za Georg Henih

  Viktor Paskov’s Ballad for Georg Henig is a bittersweet fable about love, love’s failure, and the mesmerizing power of music. Set in Bulgaria in the 1950s, the novel is told through the eyes of ten-year-old Viktor, a failed child prodigy whose proudest possession is a one-eighth-size violin. It was custom made by Georg Henig, a Czech violin maker, now dying, alone and poor, neglected by his former students and clients.

  Viktor’s parents married for love, but life on a musician’s salary has killed their illusions. Viktor’s mother resents their poverty and fantasizes about owning a sideboard, her symbol of domestic bliss. Viktor’s father, a trumpeter at the Musical Theatre, lives for his music and does not understand his wife’s yearning for possessions. To save their marriage, and his wife’s sanity, he decides to build a sideboard in Henig’s workshop. Young Viktor comes to love the old man and learns to ask new questions: who is God, what does poverty really mean, and is the new sideboard driving his parents further apart?

  The novel is saved from sentimentality by Paskov’s portrayals of banal evil: the alcoholic who menaces his children with an axe, the vile neighbors whose dog savages Henig. Paskov ponders the question of how artistic and ethical integrity can survive in essentially philistine societies. Young Victor finally poses himself the novel’s central conundrum: if a master craftsman like Henig cannot make a good instrument in six days, how can God expect the world to be
a success? MuM

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  1900s

  Enigma of Arrival

  V. S. Naipaul

  Lifespan | b. 1932 (Trinidad)

  First Published | 1987

  First Published by | Viking (London)

  Nobel Prize for Literature | 2001

  The setting of a Wiltshire valley near Stonehenge in the heart of Thomas Hardy’s mythical “Wessex” is typical of a landscape deeply inscribed in the English literary imagination. At the start of the novel, this rural idyll is obscured by incessant rain and the narrator’s romanticized image of England that he has gleaned from his literary studies in Trinidad. Through five sections that interweave time and space, a picture of England slowly emerges, which seriously disrupts the narrator’s original vision of an undisturbed culture. At every juncture, the appearance of England’s ancient purity is contaminated by change, and the lasting impression is one of incongruity. Even Jack, the landlord who is the subject of the first part of the novel, turns out not to be firmly rooted in the apparent antiquity of the location but is, like the narrator, a later arrival.