1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die

by Boxall, Peter

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  1800s

  The Time Machine

  H. G. Wells

  Lifespan | b. 1866 (England), d. 1946

  First Published | 1895

  First Published by | W. Heinemann (London)

  Full Title | The Time Machine: An Invention

  The Time Machine, H. G. Wells’s first novel, is a “scientific romance” that inverts the nineteenth-century belief in evolution as progress. The story follows a Victorian scientist, who claims that he has invented a device that enables him to travel through time, and has visited the future, arriving in the year 802,701 in what had once been London. There, he finds the future race, or, more accurately, races, because the human species has “evolved” into two distinct forms. Above ground live the Eloi—gentle, fairy-like, childish creatures, whose existence appears to be free of struggle. However, another race of beings exists—the Morlocks, underground dwellers who, once subservient, now prey on the feeble, defenseless Eloi. By setting the action nearly a million years in the future, Wells was illustrating the Darwinian model of evolution by natural selection, “fast-forwarding” through the slow process of changes to species, the physical world, and the solar system.

  The novel is a class fable, as well as a scientific parable, in which the two societies of Wells’s own period (the upper classes and the “lower orders”) are recast as equally, though differently, “degenerate” beings. “Degeneration” is evolution in reverse, while Wells’s dystopic vision in The Time Machine is a deliberate debunking of the utopian fictions of the late nineteenth century, in particular William Morris’s News from Nowhere. Where Morris depicts a pastoral, socialist utopia, Wells represents a world in which the human struggle is doomed to failure. LM

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  The Island of Dr. Moreau

  H. G. Wells

  Lifespan | b. 1866 (England), d. 1946

  First Published | 1896

  First Published by | W. Heinemann (London)

  Full Name | Herbert George Wells

  A prophetic science fiction tale, The Island of Doctor Moreau takes on an even more sinister light, given contemporary debates about cloning and genetic experimentation, as well as the contentious issues that still surround Moreau’s modus operandi—vivisection.

  As with Wells’s The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, Moreau confronts readers with a gruesome extrapolation of evolution theory, which embodies many of the concerns arising from the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859). Moreau also represents a series of fundamental anxieties about the role of science and human responsibility. Here, the archetypal mad scientist who creates without due care or any apparent concern for the consequences of his work, is as vile as the beasts he manipulates. This orgiastic society of half-men, half-beasts, with their deliberately mutilated commandments—“Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”—reflects contemporary society clearly enough, without needing the final sting. The barbarism of Moreau’s methods is as horrific as the issues that lie beneath; developments in science mean that the text has as much capacity to shock now as on first publication, as Moreau flays his animals alive and slowly molds them into humans. This may be a far cry from the infinite delicacy of genetic manipulation, but it still succeeds in arousing all of the classic fears of “unknown” scientific methods. EMcCS

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  Quo Vadis

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Lifespan | b. 1846 (Poland), d. 1916 (Switzerland)

  First Published | 1896, by Gebethner & Wolff

  Original Title | Quo vadis: Powieść z czasów Nerona

  Nobel Prize for Literature | 1905

  An epic depiction of the cruelty and corruption of ancient Rome, Quo Vadis was an international best seller in the decade after its publication. Its lurid scenes of decadent carousing at the court of Nero and of the persecution of early Christians made it highly suitable for screen adaptation.

  The central plot traces the ill-starred love between Ligia, a Christian girl from the area that is now Poland, and a Roman officer, Marcus Vinicius, who is eventually converted to the new faith after meeting the apostles Peter and Paul. This somewhat hackneyed storyline is much enlivened by the presence of Vinicius’s uncle, the Roman author Petronius, a cynical aesthete who provides a witty insider’s view of life at Nero’s court. Nero himself emerges as a complex villain, who deliberately sets fire to Rome to clear the way for his architectural ambitions. He then blames the fire on the Christians, unleashing a wave of persecution. Henryk Sienkiewicz’s strong Catholic faith shines through, as the love and spirituality of the early Christians are pitted against the power and materialism of Rome. There is also a subtext of Polish nationalism—at the time the book was written, Polish citizens were under the oppressive rule of three neighboring empires.

  A fellow Polish Nobel Prize winner, Czeslav Milosz, wrote that Sienkiewicz displayed “a rare narrative gift,” and although this kind of novel has long been out of fashion, the author’s superb craftsmanship ensures that it remains an excellent read. RegG

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  Dracula

  Bram Stoker

  Lifespan | b. 1847 (Ireland), d. 1912 (England)

  First Published | 1897

  First Published by | A. Constable & Co. (London)

  Original Language | English

  “I trust . . . you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.”

  Dracula is a true horror novel, as firmly rooted in the reality of the world where it takes place as it is in the forces of the supernatural that invade it. The blurring between these points is doubled in the story’s telling, wherein the era’s most cutting-edge modes of communication are corrupted, transmitting an ancient evil. Englishman Jonathan Harker travels to a remote castle in Transylvania to conduct a real estate deal with Count Dracula, whose fatal appetite for blood is unleashed. As the Count boards a ship for England in search of fresh prey, Dr. Van Helsing embarks on a complex plan to thwart the vampire. The narrative progresses through a series of eyewitness reports, diary entries, and technical notes from doctors and scientists. Each of these narrative modes should represent a degree of accurate “truth,” yet across them the figure of Dracula is a constant presence, lurking out of sight, contravening laws of physics. The fascination and prevailing horror of Dracula lie in the prospect that even the most advanced of technologies, developed in search of some ultimate rationality and truth, still cannot eradicate the forces of the irrational, regardless of the particular period in history or the advancement in question.

  The bloodthirsty Count has become a popular icon, the figurehead of both Universal and Hammer Horror movies throughout the twentieth century. Critics have carried out extensive psychoanalytical and postcolonial readings of the text. As a result, the strengths of the work as a horror novel, let alone a revolutionary one, have been flattened, reduced to almost nothing throughout the century that lies between its creation and the present day. This must not be the case, regardless of what vast and repetitive mileage it has already generated. SF

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  What Maisie Knew

  Henry James

  Lifespan | b. 1843 (U.S.), d. 1916 (England)

  First Published | 1897

  First Published by | W. Heinemann (London)

  Original Language | English

  When Beale and Ida Farange get divorced, their daughter Maisie is “disposed of in a manner worthy of the judgment seat of Solomon. . . . They would take her, in rotation, for six months at a time.” The actual arrangements are altogether messier, as Maisie is passed back and forth between parents, new spouses, and lovers. Yet because everything is refracted through Maisie’s consciousness, she appears as the still center of the novel, while the monstrous adults loom in and out of view.

  “Smal
l children have many more perceptions than they have terms to translate them,” Henry James says in his “Preface” to the New York edition of the novel (1909). Maisie sees more than she understands. But she also knows more than she knows. At the root of her parents’ tangled and unedifying relationships are sex and money, two subjects that Maisie, in a straightforward sense, knows nothing about. Yet she witnesses their effects in the behavior of the adults surrounding her, and in that way comes to know a very great deal about what sex and money mean.

  Maisie’s clarity of perception, uncluttered by the preoccupations of the grown-ups she is watching, and James’s supple articulation of what she sees, provide a rich account of the fall out of an unhappy marriage. The activities of the adults are also thrown into sharp relief by the dignified figure of Maisie herself. And yet she is not unscathed by her experience: no one who knows as much as Maisie could be described as an innocent child. TEJ

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  Compassion

  Benito Pérez Galdós

  Lifespan | b. 1843 (Spain), d. 1920

  First Published | 1897

  First Published by | Viuda e Hijos de Tello (Madrid)

  Original Title | Misericordia

  Compassion, one of the most popular of this author’s novels, belongs to a time in the life of Benito Pérez Galdós marked by an intense preoccupation with social questions and the possibility of a return to a morality of charity and generosity. The social world of this novel, set in Madrid, includes a middle-class family (the Zapatas, who are destined to fall into poverty) and a sea of wretched individuals, all of them victims of the sovereignty and volatility of money, who are permanently condemned to beg at the doors of churches and move from place to place in search of money and food.

  From among these unfortunates emerge two unforgettable figures: a blind Moroccan beggar called Almudena and an old maid, Benigna (Nina) de Casia, who begs for alms for the secret purpose of feeding her ruined mistress. All survive through daydreams that carry them to another, preferable, reality: Almudena surrenders himself to his love for Benigna (which is very similar to the passion of Don Quixote for Dulcinea); Benigna gathers together the lies which people have to tell each other; the ruined bourgeoisie live on the memory of better times. Eventually, when Benigna and his beloved are abandoned because the Zapatas have received an unexpected inheritance, the dignity of these two characters is raised to a dimension of almost miraculous saintliness, although very typical, on the other hand, of the radical European imagination at the end of the nineteenth century. JCM

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  Pharaoh

  Boleslaw Prus

  Lifespan | b. 1847 (Russia), d. 1912 (Poland)

  First Published | 1897, by Gebethner i Wolff (Warsaw)

  Given Name | Alexander Glowacki

  Original Title | Faraon

  Prus’s novel is set in ancient Egypt, but explores the machinations of power politics in terms equally applicable to modern times.

  “Don’t think about happiness. If it doesn’t come, there’s no disappointment; if it does come, it’s a surprise.”

  The story of Pharaoh opens 3,000 years ago, at the close of the New Kingdom period in Egypt. The nation is in decline, encroached on by desert to the west and to the east by the rising threat of the Assyrian army. Young Prince Ramses is the official heir to his dying father’s throne. On his accession, Ramses is determined to restore the powers of the pharaoh, rebuild the army, and make Egypt’s people prosperous again. But he stands to inherit an empty treasury and a population weakened by greedy priests and tax-gatherers. The high priests control Egypt in all but name, and they have no intention of allowing a brash young ruler to challenge their supremacy. Ramses relies on the support of the military and loyal nobles to implement his reforms. But the priests are dangerous enemies, especially when Ramses threatens to appropriate the treasure of the sacred Labyrinth in Thebes.

  Pharaoh, praised as the greatest novel ever written in Polish, is a Bildungsroman for the eleventh century B.C.E. Ramses’s self-imposed quest to discover how to rule his nation matures him from an ambitious boy to a wise and noble statesman. His very human failings—such as untimely passions for unsuitable women—interact with his genuine concern for social and agricultural reform. Rich in symbolic detail, Pharaoh is also an allegory for Poland or any country whose nationhood is threatened by powerful neighbors, and a meditation on historical inevitability. MuM

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  Fruits of the Earth

  André Gide

  Lifespan | b. 1869 (France), d. 1951

  First Published | 1897, by Mecure de France (Paris)

  Original Title | Les Nourriture Terrestres

  Nobel Prize for Literature | 1947

  The title page of a 1920 edition of Gide’s work is illustrated with a sympathetic woodcut portrait of the author by Louis Jou.

  André Gide wrote Fruits of the Earth while suffering from tuberculosis. It takes the form of a long letter or address written to an imagined correspondent—Nathaniel, a disciple and idealized companion—and it is apparently a hymn to the heady pleasures of daily life that can be absolutely appreciated only by someone near to death, to whom every breath is miraculous. There are asides on the common blackberry and the taste of lemons, and on the particular feeling that can be found only in the shade of certain well-tended gardens.

  The book’s mode—a startling combination of the didactic and the euphoric, incorporating verses and songs—caused it to be read as an alternative or additional gospel, and it was for a long time Gide’s most popular book, not least for its radical position on homosexuality. The new gods are sensation, desire, and instinct; the goals are adventure and excess. But an essential part of the book’s doctrine is the necessity of renunciation. There is little pleasure in possession, and desire is dulled by consummation. Conventions are inimical because they are constraining, but also because they involve false consciousness.

  This aspect of the book’s message was taken up by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and was explored more elaborately by Gide himself in The Immoralist (1902). It would be easy to argue that Fruits of the Earth is not itself a novel, but in it Gide discovered at their barest some of the most fundamental principles of novel writing, and in the relation between the narrator and his ideal reader—“I should like to speak to you more intimately than anyone has ever yet spoken to you”—he found a way of charging a work of fiction with a sense of urgency that few writers have matched. DSoa

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  The War of the Worlds

  H. G. Wells

  Lifespan | b. 1866 (England), d. 1946

  First Published | 1898

  First Published by | W. Heinemann (London)

  Original Language | English

  Like so many of H. G. Wells’s pioneering science fiction texts, The War of the Worlds introduces a theme that was to find countless imitations. His work has been reproduced directly in film, comic book, and even progressive rock, but perhaps the most well-known exploration is Orson Welles’s infamous radio broadcast of 1938. Interspersed with music from “Ramón Raquello and his orchestra,” it reported a full-scale Martian invasion. That the initial transmission provoked panic in America, though of course exaggerated by the media, is testament to the greatness of Wells’s fiction.

  The plot is simple: a strange disk lands on Horsell Common, Surrey, and eventually hatches. The alien inside is malevolent, destroying all with its “heat ray” and striking terror in the heart with the eerie battle cry of “ulla.” Humanity seems powerless in its wake and the Martians easily seize control.

  The grandeur of Wells’s vision is at once simple and deeply complex, suggesting humanity’s inherent fallibility and lack of control over its destiny. At the same time, Wells introduces a series of underlying motifs that question prevailing social
and moral beliefs. Finally, the spectacle of the Martians is both awe- and fear-inspiring, and the nature of the aliens themselves has been continually reinterpreted since the novel’s first publication. EMcCS

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  As a Man Grows Older

  Italo Svevo

  Lifespan | b. 1861 (Austria-Hungary), d. 1928 (Italy)

  First Published | 1898, by Libreria Ettore Vram

  Given Name | Aron Ettore Schmitz

  Original Title | Senilitá

  In Italo Svevo’s beloved home city of Trieste lives a man called Emilio Brentani. He is a person who harbors literary ambitions. He is also a man in love with a modest but beautiful girl called Angiolina, “little angel.” Although intended by Emilio to be an understanding free of sentimental impediments, their relationship swiftly changes, becoming passionate. The relationship soon evolves into a comedy of emotional errors, however, and Emilio’s ineptitude forces him into ever greater compromises, exposing him to an uneven contest with his self-possessed friend Balli, a sculptor. In the end, the protagonist’s plight culminates in tragedy as he disrupts the life of his sister Amalia, the one person who, too late, he realizes he truly loves.