Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: penguin 20th century classics

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  Animal Farm

  by George Orwell

  The satirical, allegorical fable of a revolution being corrupted by a wicked, greedy dictator and the blind faith of ignorant citizens, destroying the possibility of a democracy. Written during the rise of the USSR in the WWII, this book is hailed as a classic due to its powerful message and simple storytelling.
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  Six Characters in Search of an Author

  by Luigi Pirandello

  This 1921 intellectual comedy contrasts illusion with reality by introducing six individuals to a bare stage occupied by actors in rehearsal. Proclaiming themselves the incomplete creations of an author’s imagination, the six demand dialog for the story of their lives. A classic dramatic exploration of the many faces of reality. Publisher’s Note.
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  Heart of Darkness

  by Joseph Conrad

  Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was first published in 1899 in serial form in London’s Blackwood’s Magazine. Loosely based on Conrad’s firsthand experience of rescuing a company agent from a remote station in the heart of the Congo, the novel is considered a literary bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With its modern literary approach to questions such as the ambiguous nature of good and... (more)
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  The Fixer

  by Bernard Malamud

  Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds... (more)
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  Wide Sargasso Sea

  by Jean Rhys

  A sensitive and protected young woman of a land owning wealthy family, Antoinette Cosway grows up in the lush natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the cold hearted and prideful Rochester, or rather, he is bought as a husband for her with her expected inheritance being his need of survival, the unwilling groom who succumbs to his need for money and his lust. Yet he will make her pay for her... (more)
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  The End of the Affair

  by Graham Greene

  The love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah Miles, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. Two years later, after a chance meeting, Bendrix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.
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  The Wretched of the Earth

  by Frantz Fanon, Richard Philcox

  A distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique who took part in the Algerian Nationalist Movement, Frantz Fanon was one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. Fanon's masterwork is a classic alongside Edward Said's Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new... (more)
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  A House for Mr. Biswas

  by V. S. Naipaul

  The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, A House for Mr. Biswas is an unforgettable story inspired by Naipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels. In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after... (more)
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  Orlando

  by Virginia Woolf

  Orlando has always been an outsider ... His longing for passion, adventure and fulfillment takes him out of his own time. Chasing a dream through the centuries, he bounds from Elizabethan England and imperial Turkey to the modern world. Will he find happiness with the exotic Russian Princess Sasha? Or is the dashing explorer Shelmerdine the ideal man? And what form will Orlando take on the journey — a nobleman,... (more)