1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die

by Boxall, Peter

First Published | 1901

  First Published by | S. Fischer Verlag (Berlin)

  Original Title | Lieutenant Gustl

  Utterly bored at the opera, egocentric young Lieutenant Gustl prefers to look around in search of pretty women and potential flirts. In tune with the growing anti-Semitism of the time, he thinks that there are too many Jews in the army, and later contemplates an upcoming duel with a doctor who made an unflattering remark about the military.

  In a cloakroom argument after the show, a baker, reacting to Gustl’s attempt to jump the queue, grabs the soldier’s sword and threatens to snap it. Convinced he has been completely dishonored but unable to challenge the baker to a duel because of the latter’s lower social status, Gustl ponders suicide and spends the night wandering through the streets of Vienna wishing for the baker’s death. In the morning he resolves to have his last breakfast. It is while sitting in a café that he learns the baker died of a stroke just after their encounter, thus freeing Gustl from his suicidal thoughts.

  Despite its simplicity, this narrative quickly became famous because of the scandal it provoked with its sarcastic portrayal of an Austrian officer and because of its questioning the rationality of dueling. What assures its lasting fame, however, is its innovative structure and language. Written entirely in the form of an interior monologue, the text borrows its technique from Freud’s early psychoanalytical studies on mental associations. Schnitzler’s approach was highly influential with later writers such as James Joyce in Ulysses. LB

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  1900s

  Kim

  Rudyard Kipling

  Lifespan | b. 1865 (India), d. 1936 (England)

  First Published | 1901

  First Published by | Macmillan (London)

  Nobel Prize for Literature | 1907

  In this imperialist Bildungsroman the young hero, Kim, an Irish orphan, matures from a Lahore street urchin into an invaluable member of the British Secret Service. Rudyard Kipling equates Kim’s personal maturity with a wider cultural maturity, linking the boy’s journey into manliness with one from native childishness to an adult European civilization. These two ideas are deeply entwined in the novel as Kim must trade in the education of the street for that of a military boarding school, and the languages of India for his native tongue. Kipling’s own language fully supports this hierarchy, so that the supposedly immature cultures of Asia are expressed through a deliberately archaic idiom.

  Kipling has been rightly seen as an apologist for British imperialism; in Kim there is little doubt that British rule is the best thing for India. Moreover, as a Sahib who is a master of disguise, able to successfully appear as a Hindu, a Muslim, or a Buddhist-mendicant, Kim embodies the notion of Western mastery over the Asiatic cultures.

  Nevertheless, this view of Kipling’s writing does not do justice to the complexity of his vision of India. Kipling frequently identifies similarities between the cultures of India and those of the Europeans-in-India. The Irish soldiers who discover Kim are just as superstitious and credulous as the Indian travelers on the Grand Trunk Road, and the Buddhist priest who shares responsibility for Kim’s education with Creighton, the English surveyor and spy master, presents a perspective on India remarkably similar to Creighton’s own. One of the charms of this novel is as a survey of India, and, though it repeatedly lumps together the “oriental” as an undifferentiated mass, its descriptions of individual Indians stresses the brightness and diversity of Indian public life. LC

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  1900s

  Buddenbrooks

  Thomas Mann

  Lifespan | b. 1875 (Germany), d. 1955

  First Published | 1901, by S. Fischer Verlag (Berlin)

  Original Title | Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie

  Nobel Prize for Literature | 1929

  The cover of an early twentieth-century German edition of Mann’s family saga suggests a cosier vision than the book presents.

  Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family is among the last and greatest achievements of the European realist novel. The book spans forty-odd years during the mid-nineteenth century.

  Set in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, the novel follows the fortunes of one of the leading families of the city’s ruling merchant class. Its focus is on the growth of three siblings from childhood to midlife. Christian Buddenbrook, lacking the self-discipline (or perhaps the self-repression) required to become a businessman and solid citizen, performs instead the self-destructive role of half-licensed fool. By contrast, his elder brother, Thomas, adapts himself fully, but at great physical and psychological cost, to his position as head of the firm, Consul and Senator. Their sister, Tony, passionately values the prestige of the family, but her infelicitous adventures in love and marriage show that she is incapable of playing the dutiful daughter and wife. The final chapters are devoted to Thomas’s son, Hanno, who inherits from his Dutch mother an exceptional musical talent and an estrangement from the masculine, public shows of the Hanseatic state. With Hanno, we realize, the Buddenbrook line will take a new direction, or come to its end.

  The novel’s tapestry of closely observed scenes is seemingly inexhaustible—among them are family feasts and arguments, deathbeds and childbirth, weddings, seaside holidays, schoolrooms, and ship launchings. Mann’s detailed analysis of the interplay between public and private self, and between a declining ethic of civic and commercial propriety and a new spirit of aesthetic self-cultivation, is remarkable, not only for its subtlety and objectivity, but for the wider historical resonances evoked by his characters and their fates. MR

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  1900s

  The Hound of the Baskervilles

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Lifespan | b. 1859 (Scotland), d. 1930

  First Published | 1902, by G. Newnes (London)

  Original Title | The Hound of the Baskervilles: Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes

  Sydney Paget created this image of the ghostly hound for the original serialized version of the novel in Strand magazine.

  Arguably one of the best Sherlock Holmes stories and one of the all-time classical mysteries, the atmosphere of The Hound of the Baskervilles is ghoulish, full of suspense and fear, and Sherlock Holmes is at his most brilliant. When Sir Charles Baskerville dies suddenly from heart failure, there are rumors that his death was caused by the gigantic ghostly hound of the title, said to have haunted his family for generations. When the estate’s heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, arrives in England from Canada to take up his inheritance, Watson accompanies him to Baskerville Hall, and a skeptical Holmes is called in to investigate. Situated on the edge of Dartmoor, the Baskerville estate borders a vast, brooding, misty moor, containing features such as Grimpen Mire, a deadly quicksand-like bog. It is the descriptions of the moor and the oppressive Baskerville Hall that provide much of the chilling atmosphere that pervades the novel. Into this setting Sir Conan Doyle weaves the sounds of a wailing woman, a mysterious butler, an escaped killer, and the specter of the ghostly, fire-breathing, murderous hound.

  The Hound of the Baskervilles draws the reader in, not only to the world of the misty moor and strange goings-on, but also to the works of Conan Doyle. In this novel he displays his own interest in the occult, alongside Sherlock Holmes’s talent for keen scientific detection, in a story that is full of atmosphere, suspense, and unexpected turns. It is a novel that keeps the reader fearful and guessing until the very last page, and then leaves them wanting more. Arguably the most popular of all the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, since its original serialization in 1901–1902, The Hound of the Baskervilles has been set to film no fewer than eighteen times, beginning with a German silent production of 1914. LE

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  1900s

  Heart of Darkness

  Joseph Conrad

  Lifespan | b. 1857 (Ukraine), d. 1924 (England)

  First Published | 1902

  First Publishe
d by | W. Blackwood & Sons (London)

  Original Language | English

  Based on Joseph Conrad’s own venture into Africa in 1890, Heart of Darkness is the best of his shorter novels and is the most brilliant of all his works. Eloquent, audacious, experimental, recessive, satiric, yet deeply humane, since its serialization in 1899 it has continued to provoke controversy and reward analysis. Charles Marlow, one of Conrad’s “transtextual” characters (for he appears also in Youth, Lord Jim, and Chance), tells a group of British friends about his journey into a part of central Africa identifiable as the “Congo Free State,” which was then the private property of Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Marlow recalls the absurdities and atrocities that he witnessed: a French warship shelling the continent, the cruel treatment of enslaved black laborers, and the remorseless rapacity of the white colonialists who are impelled by the desire for profits from ivory. He looks forward to meeting Mr. Kurtz, the greatly talented and idealistic European trader; but, when he reaches the dying adventurer, he finds that the idealist has become deranged and depraved. Virtually a savage god, Kurtz sums up his view of Africans in the phrase “Exterminate all the brutes!” The “heart of darkness,” we learn, is not simply the jungle at the center of the “Dark Continent”; it is also the corrupt heart of Kurtz, and it may even be European imperialism itself. “All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz,” and London is depicted as the center of brooding gloom.

  Written when imperialism was “politically correct,” this brilliantly anti-imperialist and largely anti-racist work shows Conrad at the peak of his powers as a challenging innovator in ideas and techniques. Heart of Darkness has proved immensely influential, and numerous adaptations include the movie Apocalypse Now (1979). ClW

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  1900s

  The Wings of the Dove

  Henry James

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

  First Published | 1902

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

  Original Language | English

  The Wings of the Dove is perhaps Henry James’s darkest moral drama, the story of a passionate love triangle between the enigmatic Kate Croy, her secret fiancé Merton Densher, and Milly Theale, the young and fatally ill American heiress. All is played out against the symbolic backdrops of London materialism and Venetian beauty and decay. Milly’s desperate desire to experience “the sense of having lived” provides both the sympathetic and self-serving motivations for Kate’s scheme. She wants Densher to seduce Milly, filling her final days with happiness, in the knowledge that the fortune the girl will surely leave him after her death will enable him to marry Kate herself. James is a master of the complex moral situation, and combines the melodrama of his plot with nuanced values. Though elaborate and self-conscious, the narrative style lacks neither realism nor intensity. The sexual attraction between Kate and Densher, his developing feelings for Milly, her determined resistance of her fate, and Kate’s jealousy, are vividly and powerfully portrayed.

  When Milly finally learns the truth of her friends’ deception but leaves them her fortune nevertheless, her own capacity for manipulation through moral victory becomes clear. For in renouncing the spoils of corruption, Densher also rejects Kate for Milly’s idealized memory, with which she knows she cannot compete. In the very success of her plan Kate realizes that she has brought about her own downfall. “We shall never be again as we were,” she declares. DP

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  1900s

  The Immoralist

  André Gide

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

  First Published | 1902

  First Published by | Mercure de France (Paris)

  Original Title | L’Immoraliste

  A thought-provoking work that still has the power to challenge complacent attitudes and unfounded cultural assumptions, The Immoralist recounts a young Parisian man’s attempt to overcome social and sexual conformity.

  Michel is a young, puritanical scholar, who has recently married solely to please his dying father. On his honeymoon in North Africa he becomes very ill and almost dies. His brush with death gives him an all-consuming desire to live, and his convalescence has the force of a religious awakening. Experiencing things with a heightened awareness, he is sexually drawn to the Arab boys he surrounds himself with. Sensually aroused, he realizes that conventional social morality and the trappings of bourgeois civilization—education, church, and culture—have alienated him from his true self. But the selfish pursuit of authenticity and pleasure he embarks on causes him to neglect his wife as well as important practical matters. When she falls ill, he persuades her they should go south, doing so merely in order to gratify his own desires, which he is incapable of resisting. His once radical freedom has turned to base enslavement. Michel’s attempt to access a deeper truth by repudiating culture, decency, and morality results in confusion and loss. In being true to himself, Michel has harmed others. Yet the novel remains as much an indictment of the arbitrary constraints of a hypocritical society as it is of Michel’s misguided behavior. AL

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  1900s

  The Ambassadors

  Henry James

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

  First Published | 1903

  First Published by | Methuen & Co. (London)

  Original Language | English

  “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what HAVE you had?”

  Henry James regarded The Ambassadors as his best novel, and it is certainly held to be his greatest artistic achievement. In the character of Lambert Strether, a middle-aged New Englander confronted with the social and aesthetic attractions of a beguiling Paris, he brought to perfection his style of first-person narrative.

  Strether has been sent to Europe on behalf of his fiancée, the redoubtable Mrs. Newsome, charged with retrieving her son Chad from the clutches of a liaison which, it is assumed, is corrupting him with European moral laxness. But upon his arrival, Strether discovers a much more complicated affair, which leads him to re-evaluate both American and European cultures. Although he fails as an ambassador, he comes to a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both European and American society, and he quickly accedes to the suggestion that Chad’s relationship with the beautiful Marie de Vionnet is not a shameful affair but actually a “virtuous attachment.”

  Overall, The Ambassadors’ vision is tragic: its most sensitive characters are largely victims of a seemingly inescapable social regulation. Indeed, with The Ambassadors, James excels at representing figures who are aware of their loss of youth, and who seem increasingly out of pace with the world. In the figure of Strether, he has developed a character who proves capable of choosing his own destiny, though hardly a triumphant one. DP, TH

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  1900s

  The Riddle of the Sands

  Erskine Childers

  Lifespan | b. 1870 (Ireland), d. 1922

  First Published | 1903, by Smith, Elder & Co. (Lon.)

  Full Title | The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service . . .

  Erskine Childers wrote The Riddle of the Sands after returning home wounded from the Second Boer War, where he fought for the British. The narrator, Carruthers, who works for the Foreign Office, receives a mysterious invitation from an old friend, Davies, to join him on his yacht in the Baltic. The Dulcibella is not what Carruthers was expecting. For a start, there is no crew—or, rather, Carruthers is the crew—and Davies is not on a pleasure cruise. He is systematically mapping the shallows of the German North Sea coast, having realized that Germany could exploit the apparently unnavigable waters to launch a surprise large-scale invasion of Britain using shallow-draught troop-carriers.

  Carruthers and Davies’s activities attract the atten
tion of the German authorities, and they soon face more serious threats than those presented by the treacherous seas. Matters are further complicated by Davies’s having fallen in love with a German girl: perhaps Childers was able to dramatize Davies’s conflict of loyalties as vividly as he does because it reflected his own divided sense of duty toward Ireland and Britain (which would eventually lead to his execution). This novel was intended to make a serious point about a potential threat to British national security. But just as Davies and Carruthers commit themselves to their adventure not only out of a sense of duty but also for the sheer excitement it brings, so The Riddle of the Sands easily transcends its role as propaganda. TEJ

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  1900s

  The Call of the Wild

  Jack London

  Lifespan | b. 1876 (U.S.), d. 1916

  First Published | 1903

  First Published by | Macmillan (New York)

  First Serialized | 1903, in Saturday Evening Post

  Set against a backdrop of winter in northwest Canada during the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s, The Call of the Wild is the story of a dog’s transformation from pet to leader of a wolf pack.

  The dog, Buck, has been raised as part of a human household. When he is stolen to join a sled-dog pack, he is transformed into a mere servant of humans. This is a Darwinian world, where only those most fitted to the situation will survive. London describes dogfights, beatings, and Buck’s growing blood lust with a lyrical touch that highlights the romantic appeal of the wilderness and wildness itself. When the traces binding Buck to the sled are cut, Buck becomes the equal of his rescuer, John Thornton, but is bound to Thornton by love. It is only with Thornton’s death, when Buck kills some Yeehat Indians, that he realizes that humans have no power over him, so he turns his back on the human world to embrace the wild.