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.

good thread, thank you!

@VirtuousGathering I love Kate O'Brien (and she's mentioned in the film Brief Encounter as a favourite from the Boots' Lending Library!).

I did a module called The Human Condition at Uni. I think the novels were:

Camus La Peste (recommend)
Sartre Nausea (short, but fairly incomprehensible)
Germinal (long, recommend)
Balzac, Madame Bovary (long, recommend - loved)

You could also try:
Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse (short, recommend - loved)
Camus The Stranger (short, recommend - loved)
Les Miserables (long - never finished it!)
Kafka The Trial (short, recommend)

Do we see which novel it is? I was assuming that 'the new Kate O'Brien' was That Lady, but the setting is pre-war, isn't it, though it was filmed in 1945?

I thought Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary,.....Its a great story though. And I would really recommend Germinal.

Not literature but one of the most totally engrossing books I have read on "being human" is Being Human by Roger Smith. Its a historical and philosophical look at how we have come to understand being human since the enlightenment. He challenges the idea that there is one fixed irrefutable ahistoric human nature.

Ooh, good question! I'm afraid I don't know.

This is a wonderful thread; I see so many favourites here. I’m also so pleased to see Middlemarch recommended so many times. The greatest novel ever written.

I will add Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton to the list. A novella that I come back to time and time again.

And some Chekhov, too!

Oh and I highly recommend Irène Némirovsky. All of her novels and short stories.

Olivia Manning
Pat Barker
Muriel Spark

Steinbeck

So many good recommendations! I really enjoy Douglas Coupland when thinking about modern life. He’s bleak but beautiful in his consideration of what it means to be human.

Life After God
Binge
Generation X

Primo Levi - If This Is A Man + The Truce
Slyvia Plath- The Bell Jar
Quite a bit of Yeats poetry
I know it's not considered "proper" literature, but I found Maeve Binchy novels to be more true to human nature than the likes of Colm Tóibín. I think she's a better writer.

Oh I just came back to the thread to say Douglas Coupland and saw you had beaten me to it.
I really liked All Families are Psychotic which was weird, wacky, dysfunctional and all the rest but so very heart-warming and life-affirming with it.

Life After Life has been mentioned a couple of times but the book that really scratched that existential itch for me was the companion piece A God in Ruins which blew me away for...(too spoiler to mention) reasons. I still think about that book years later

Recent novels I've really enjoyed which might fit the bill are Claire Lombardo's The Most Fun We Ever Had and Nathan Hill's Wellness - which is a joy on Audible, if you're so inclined.

Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty is a bit quirky but I found it very emotionally satisfying.

So he did! I was clearly paying lots of attention in that module 😄

The Bee Sting
Demon Copperhead

I don’t think Anna Karenina was mentioned. Kept me awake until I finished it (many years ago now).

Crime and Punishment does fit the bill perfectly though. Compelling read.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession (both Tolstoy)

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.

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.

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

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.

Love Douglas Coupland and the blank fiction movement!

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.