Great literature about the human condition

[kublacant]

I’m not sure how else to word it. I have had some bereavement recently close family and further afield and it has really made me contemplate life ((and death)

I am sure greater minds than mine have grappled with this!

does anyone know any great literature deals with life/human condition? I’m thinking they are probably German or Russian!

I am an avid reader, so it’s natural for me to turn to books at these sorts of times. Fiction only.

@PondGhost@heldinadream I have never before met another William Maxwell fan and here you both are. My absolute favourite of his is so long see you later. You would both like A death in the family by James Agee.

Sorry for derail OP. Another wonderful novel about the human condition is Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. It won a Pulitzer in I think the 70s and I have never understood why it isn't better known here

Thank you so much for all these suggestions so far!

I knew the erudite readers of Mumsnet would understand and steer me in the right direction.

@PondGhost please may I join the FFofM club. Her books used to mean everything to me. I recently listened to The Sea, The Sea which was still a pleasure because it was beautifully narrated however it was somewhat challenging in ways I'd not felt 30 odd years ago. I decided not to re-read/listen to any others.

@PondGhost @heldinadream @Tolber I have never once managed to finish a book by Iris Murdoch and I've tried loads of times. Was I just too old? Every time I'd try, another Murdoch fan would say 'aha! Your mistake is you're reading the wrong one,' and then recommend another one which was also terrible.

Marking.
I think Watership Down, while being about rabbits, is a great book about the human condition.🙂

I’m so sorry to hear what you’ve been going through — grief has a way of pulling us into the big questions, whether we’re ready or not.

You're absolutely right that German and Russian literature have rich traditions of grappling with the human condition. A few novels that come to mind:

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy – a short but powerful reflection on mortality, meaning, and the quiet tragedy of an unexamined life. It’s stark, but deeply humane.
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann – a sprawling and philosophical novel that uses illness and time as metaphors to explore life, death, and everything in between. Demanding, but rewarding.
• Demons or The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky – for existential and moral wrestling at its most intense. Dostoevsky doesn’t flinch from suffering, but he also insists on the possibility of redemption.
• Stoner by John Williams – not Russian or German, but an exquisitely quiet American novel about a seemingly ordinary man’s life. It’s about work, disappointment, love, and acceptance — devastating in its simplicity.

If you prefer something more contemporary, Olga Tokarczuk’s work — especially Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead — combines philosophical inquiry with strange, beautiful storytelling.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. I love this book and it really does set humanity and the art we produce in the vast expanse of space and time.

It’s a good question. I mean, there’s no particular reason I can see why her novels should only work for the very young, but certainly if I read one now, I’m reading via the 15-year-old me who thought they were terribly sophisticated and witty and some kind of guide for how adult life was going to be, a sort of upper-middle-class intellectual sex comedy.

Whereas now I see them as weirdly schematic, so overloaded with intricate plots that it sometimes feels as if you’re watching a speeded-up film, and I realise she doesn’t really do character — they’re all ‘types’. The wily old enchanter, the precocious child, the fierce young woman etc. I think they simply don’t work as fully resolved novels. They’re like brilliant pastiches of the great 19thc realists, not quite welded to a post-Christian philosophy of ‘the good’.

That's who I first thought of too! Staring at the Sun is the most profound thing I've read about human mortality.

@PondGhost @heldinadream @Tolber just looking at the row of Iris Murdochs on my shelf which I've not picked up in 20 years so I'm definitely in the FFoM club. The last time I tried to read one it felt very dated to me, which I never picked up on in my teens at all when I loved them.

Lots of my favourites recommended on here. Here's some more:

Kirstin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. This follows the life of a noble woman in the 14th century. It's ansolutely fabulous and there's going to be a readalong on here starting in July if you want company whole reading it.

King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett. The life of Macbeth/Earl Thorfinn. More inspired by the historical sources than Shakespeare's play.

Your Wish is my Command by Deena Mohamed. A graphic novel set in a world where you can buy wishes and what three people decide to do with a first class wish. Short but thoughtful.

The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. Another full life story following a Nigerian woman in the mid twentieth century.

And on Iris Murdoch, yes she's stylised but she's funny. I read her first as an adult in my 30s (not long after she died) and enjoyed them so I wouldn't think of her as a writer for young people but it may well be that a teenager reads them in a different way than an adult.

Not as highbrow as lots of suggestions. But the pursuit of happiness by Douglas Kennedy is very thought provoking

So many books on here that I have read and so many new suggestions to look at.

I’m also delighted to welcome the FFoM club. I’ve never got on with her writing but maybe I’ll try her again.

I picked up Olive Kitteridge at the library this afternoon 😀

The Hare With The Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. It's a biography but I found it utterly engrossing and very much a rumination on what it is to be a human in a complicated world.

And me! Maybe we should have an online IM readalong, but I suspect my commentary would be something like 'Really, Charles Arrowby is a disgustingly vain, self-satisfied, old goat, and his pronouncements on food and women make me want to rip out the page and run screaming at a wall'. So maybe not.

I was a huge John Fowles fan at the same age (mid-teens), but now he just strikes me as a crashingly self-satisfied male bore who objectifies his female characters in intellectually self-preening ways.

Great to hear of a Kirstin Lavransdatter readalong, @JaninaDuszejko -- that's another novel I haven't reread since my teens, but maybe it's time to venture back!

Add me to your William Maxwell list.

And I’m coming back immediately to recommend to @kublacant that you seek out the novels of Elizabeth Taylor, unless of course you know them already. They are small masterpieces. Very funny in places, but so true and sad and very definitely grappling with questions of the human condition.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont might be a bit close to the bone if you’ve recently suffered a bereavement, but she wrote many other wonderful books.

I would like to also recommend the Backlisted podcast which talks about lots of the books mentioned here and many more. It's really interesting and funny.

And me! Another one who came to him via The Chateau.

Another suggestion of a great and humane but small-scale novel, OP -- Kate O'Brien's The Land of Spices (1941). Banned in Ireland for a single sentence referencing a gay relationship, it's set in a girl's convent school in early 20thc Ireland, and split between the perspectives of a pupil who grows up at the school, and the beautiful, tormented, humane English Mother Superior who becomes a form of alternative enabling mother-figure for her.

It's very good on the slightly feverish atmosphere of a boarding school and the rivalries and snobberies and good feeling among the nuns and girls (and it's a novel in which a Catholic education is a force for good and intellectual enfranchisement), and on goodness, and what makes a good life, and grief, and the tiny ways in which people who remain virtual strangers to one another can nonetheless influence one another for good.

A sort of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but rejigged for a Young Woman.

Agreed - I really enjoy it.

It's like a conversation with friends. I don't have anyone irl to talk about books with so here and Backlisted are great for me!

I came here to say Stoner by John Williams. Just an extraordinary book following the life of Stoner, a university professor.

Is there a thread for the KL readalong - I can’t see one but maybe looking in the wrong place…