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Great literature about the human condition

118 replies

kublacant · 11/06/2025 20:10

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.

OP posts:
kublacant · 15/06/2025 22:04

this has been wonderful. Thank you all so much for these suggestions.

I'm quite taken aback by the number of replies!

Some I have already read but lots of new books now on my list.

OP posts:
NameChangedOfc · 16/06/2025 06:31

I forgot Carson McCullers!!

osirista · 16/06/2025 10:35

Dolamroth · 12/06/2025 08:16

Life and Fate By Vasily Grossman.

Honestly it's wonderful, heartbreaking and fantastic.

The story of how it was published is pretty mad too.

will look this one up!

VirtuousGathering · 16/06/2025 14:59

NameChangedOfc · 16/06/2025 06:31

I forgot Carson McCullers!!

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

NameChangedOfc · 16/06/2025 15:05

VirtuousGathering · 16/06/2025 14:59

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

Oh, may I ask why?

NameChangedOfc · 16/06/2025 15:09

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😅)

VirtuousGathering · 16/06/2025 18:52

NameChangedOfc · 16/06/2025 15:05

Oh, may I ask why?

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.

NameChangedOfc · 16/06/2025 21:14

VirtuousGathering · 16/06/2025 18:52

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.

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).

Dolamroth · 17/06/2025 14:18

osirista · 16/06/2025 10:35

will look this one up!

You won't regret it!

JudyInDisguiseWithGlasses · 18/06/2025 18:52

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

JudyInDisguiseWithGlasses · 18/06/2025 18:54

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

David Copperfield ditto

Rolypolycustard · 21/06/2025 15:12

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ at the poster's request.

Courlis · 21/06/2025 23:10

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.
,

Karistyleaftea · 27/07/2025 15:06

@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.

fruitpastille · 31/07/2025 19:47

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.

AnotherEmily · 02/08/2025 17:24

I loved the Burgess Boys, must read more!

snurtifier · 05/08/2025 23:21

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.

LoserWinner · 05/08/2025 23:58

“The Death of Ivan Ilyich” Tolstoy

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