Great literature about the human condition

“The Death of Ivan Ilyich” Tolstoy

Richard Hughes wrote a wonderful novel called The Fox In The Attic, which was intended to be the first part of a trilogy entitled The Human Predicament. The second is also good, if rather disturbing in some ways. Sadly he never wrote the third.

I loved the Burgess Boys, must read more!

I've just read another - I who have never known men. It seems to be the 'in' thing to read. Echoes of Margaret Atwood. Very thought provoking.

@Tolber Just popped on to say that I have just finished Elizabet Strout's "Tell me Everything" and
it is exquisite.
(I have read her previous books too.)
Such a wonderful writer.

I'm sure you've got way too many recommendations already, but....

Top of my list, if you haven't already read it, would be Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It is strange, wonderful and above all consolatory. Best to come to it blind.

I’d also like to put in a word for Penelope Fitzgerald, who should be much better known and should have won the Booker for The Blue Flower. All her novels have a lot more going on than meets the eye. The Beginning of Spring is very approachable and set in Russia, even if Fitzgerald was English.

If you're familiar with The Tempest I would strongly recommend Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood, which is, very obliquely, about grief. It was commissioned as part of a series of modern novels responding to Shakespeare plays. I think it’s clever, inventive and also quite funny.

A handful of Aussies:
I’m a big fan of Richard Flanagan. Gould’s Book of Fish is where I started, but The Sound of One Hand Clapping is probably the best known of his early novels. I've never felt in the right frame of mind for his debut, Death of a River Guide, but everything else he's written would fit the brief.

Conversations at Curlew Creek by David Malouf. The conversations take place overnight in a remote part of NSW, between an Irish origin convict and bushranger who is to be hanged in the morning and the policeman sent to oversee the execution.

Flames by Robbie Arnott is a sort of magical realist riff on responses to death. I was sold within the first few pages, where a mother comes back briefly to haunt her family, partly transformed into a tree fern. She spends hours in the shower to keep her friends in good condition…

Finally, for something historical try The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I think he's one of the most technically brilliant contemporary writers. Set in ancient Japan, where Mitchell taught for several years, it's a love story, a thriller (complete with proper cliffhangers) and also a commentary on corruption and relations between Europe and Japan, which was essentially closed off at the time the novel is set.
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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

David Copperfield ditto

Anything by Dostoyevsky! Especially Crime and Punishment and The Idiot

Margaret Atwood but especially Cat's Eye, and The Robber Bride.

Sophie 's Choice by William Styron

You won't regret it!

Ha, I see what you mean now, yes.
There's something magic about books that you discover in the teens and I understand perfectly wanting to preserve that, almost like an emotional photograph.

(I discovered her in my late twenties).

Bear in mind, I haven't read her in probably thirty years, but I suspect that a large part of her appeal for me was deeply teenage -- the alienated outsider, the child on the edge of the wedding, the failing child prodigy etc. There are writers I reread every year or two, and read them differently as I age, but I think I'll leave her work alone and remember it with affection.

Excuse me if I'm bombarding, but I don't know where my mind is!
Did someone mention Stefan Zweig? Please, OP, read him too.
(I may come back again with another one😅)

Oh, may I ask why?

Oh, god, she was another huge enthusiasm of my teens -- I don't know whether I could go back to her now.

will look this one up!

I forgot Carson McCullers!!

Highly recommend The Samuel Beckett Trilogy comprising of the novels Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable.

The collection explores the human condition, particularly the experiences of aging, memory, and mortality. It explores the search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. You called also read his play Waiting for Godot The main themes in the play are: Existentialism, The passing of time, and Suffering.

Fin de siècle literature might also be of interest to you, Op.

Love Douglas Coupland and the blank fiction movement!

Thanks - I’ll ask to be included, I would love to read this but have never got around to it and I’m currently really enjoying my first MN readalong.

A very short book. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper.

It was being planned/discussed on the Count of Monte Cristo readalong (part 2) thread. I expect there will be a new thread when it starts.

I’d recommend the Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davis but particularly ‘What’s bred in the bone’ which is a story of a man’s life but also his journey to make sense of it and the extent to which he achieves it.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession (both Tolstoy)