カテゴリー: Fiction European

★★★★★ Boyhood and growing up, away from the safety of parents' arms and the light, and eventually he becomes a man. It's short but goes deep into the self awareness of the boy, so it's universal, that should be read especially by young people.

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Demian
Hermann Hesse, 1919
135 pages
Read 2024.4


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It's a story about boyhood and growing up, away from the safety of parents' arms and the light, and through discovering evil - and eventually he becomes a man.

It starts with realistic touch and ends with the ultimate reality, the war, but by then Sinclair has discovered himself through friendship with Demian, his influences and departing from these influences, and a bit of magical experiences. 

The world was clear for him, like it was clear for all of us when we were small, divided into good and evil. 
But he discovers that the world is both, and there's a meaning for you to be there...
It's short but goes deep into the self awareness of the boy, it's been over 100 years since it's published but still loved, so it's universal.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth (Penguin Classics)

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth (Penguin Classics)

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●

HESSE - DEMIAN - HESSE - DEMIA

★★★★★ Incomplete work published decades after his death in 1960. It's half his biography half a novel and is fully touching. 

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The First Man
Albert Camus 1994 (1960)
Le Premier homme
282 pages
Read 2024.5


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It’s the 70s American wild wild west hippy “comic” – not my cup of tea.
Incomplete work published decades after it was found at his death in 1960.
It’s half his biography half a novel  and is truly touching.

It talks about the life in poverty in Algiers but it’s full of love for those he was close, his mother, grandmother, uncle, friend and teacher.
Without father and without tradition, split between France and Algeria, living in the poverty, there was nobody to rely on, nobody to teach him about life, other than how to survive in the poverty, until, he met his teacher at the elementary school.

How sometimes in life, people connected not by blood but pure love can raise you.
This section of the teacher is the most moving.
Then as he grows older, it abruptly ends where he is in love.
True, this could have been a masterpiece.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

The First Man

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The First Man (Penguin Modern Classics)

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Il primo uomo (Italiano)

★★★★☆ A classic that everyone has heard of, and it is more than I imagined, full of sorrows yes but the self pity is full on. A universal feeling of despair we all feel at some point in life.

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The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
144 pages
Read 2024.5


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A classic that everyone has heard of, and it is more than I imagined, full of sorrows yes but the self pity is full on.
Maybe it feels different if you read it when you’re young, or definitely if you read it in the 18th century.

This is the original version of all the sad love stories that came about since.
You’re in love, you misunderstand the affection, you suffer, you’re in love with your suffering and it is far stronger than yourself and you can’t take it any more.
A universal feeling of despair we all feel at some point in life.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Sorrows of Young Werther 

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Sorrows of Young Werther 

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
I dolori del giovane Werther (Italiano)

★★★★☆ He wrote it after the hellish travel with his lover, a self destructive man, a full of self pity and frustrations. True you should read this while drunk and preferably in the night.

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A season in hell
Arthur Rimbaud, 1873
Une saison en enfer
96 pages
Read 2024.6


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
A poem of youth in pain. It's true you should read this while drunk and preferably in the night. 
Not in the Mediterranean summer daytime.

He wrote it after the hellish travel with his lover, a self destructive man, and this is as the title suggests, a full of self pity and frustrations.

Would have felt differently if read in different occasions for sure.

Penguin classic 60, this version translated in 1962.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
A Season In Hell

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Una stagione all'inferno

★★★★☆ Eco’s 7th and last novel. Book about the journalism of our time – conspiracy theories and fake news. A warning to the Italian society today.

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Numero Zero
Umberto Eco, 2015
208 pages
Read 2024.6


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Book about the journalism of our time – conspiracy theories and fake news.
Eco’s 7th and last novel.
It’s not ask mind provoking as his other classics but nice and short-ish.

We live in the world where nothing can be trusted to be real, and real can be fabricated.
A warning to the Italian society today.

It’d have been more fun if I knew more about the modern Italian history around Mussolini time.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Numero Zero

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Numero Zero

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Numero zero (Italiano)

★★★★☆ Absurdity, humiliation, resistance, Kafka’s world. We get little explanation throughout. Death is unceremonial, his death is nothing but a humiliation.

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The Trial
Franz Kafka, 1914
Der Prozess
Read in 2020.05

🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

Absurdity, humiliation, resistance, Kafka's world.

I only read Metamorphosis when I was a student, but I do remember it's the same absurdity.
Out of blue he's arrested, out of blue he's turned into an insect.
He suffers from the humiliation and irrational world around him.

The protagonist is a serious man, he struggles to accept illogical thinking, but we don't get to know where the court would be, or even why he was arrested, we get little explanation throughout.
Death is unceremonial, his death is nothing but a humiliation.

 

🔽 Related pages 🔽
tag

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

The Trial (Penguin Modern Classics)

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Trial: Franz Kafka (Penguin Modern Classics) 

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Il processo

★★★★☆ A very Mediterranean story. Struggle of lovers and mothers, and the men who live and die for honour and revenge. One day hopefully on a stage.

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Blood wedding 
Federico García Lorca, 1932
Bodas de sangre
80 pages
Read 2024.09


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It's a lot shorter than I thought, it's a play that's considered the classic and has powerful emotions. 
It's the wild emotions of the lovers and mother, it's the cry of those who lost loved ones in the Mediterranean countryside where honour and revenge are the purpose of living, and worth dying for.

It's most definitely to be enjoyed as a theatre piece so reading it might not be the best experience of it and of course translation might lose its true colour, but being so short it felt like I needed more for me to go deeper into it.
So yes on a stage one day.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Blood Wedding: A Play (Faber Drama)

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Lorca: Three Plays (Blood Wedding, Yerma, The House of Bernarda Alba) (NHB Drama Classics) (Drama Classic Collections) 

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Nozze di sangue (Italiano)

★★★★☆ Life is not fair. A tragedy but also a sad comedy. Russian literature is bottomless. A man saves money for ages and buys a new coat, and it gets stolen. Regardless of time and society we live in, we share the anger and desperation.

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The Overcoat 
Nikolai Gogol, 1842
Шине́ль
Russia
112 pages
Read 2024.10


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
Short stories of the famous Gogol. 
You do see a lot of Dostoyevsky in his stories, that the life is unfair, and stories are tragedies yet sadly comical.

Written in this period in Russia, the stories are critical of the bureaucracy and of higher ranked officials.
A regular official saves up to get an overcoat and gets robbed, it's simple as that, and though it's keeping it subtle it is fully miserable, and universal, we totally understand how the protagonist is feeling at every stage of the story.

The story is ridiculous yet believable, and again universal.
Russian literature is bottomless.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

The Overcoat and Other Stories

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (Thrift Editions)

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Il cappotto (Italiano)

★★★★★ Accabadora, a woman in Sardinia who ends the suffering of very ill and their families. Is she an angel or a devil? That’s not the point any more to them. A book with an unusual dignity.

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Accabadora
Michela Murgia, 2009
208 pages
Read 2024.11


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
The famous Accabadora, the woman who ends it.

It’s very Sardinian, very Mediterranean.
You can almost see with your eyes closed of the dry town with stones, men at the bar and women hurrying to go back home to cook, and the dry field that is brown, ready to ignite a fire from any tiny sparkles.

Maria was adopted by this woman who lives alone since she was small.
Time to time, she dresses completely in black and leave their house in the night – and comes back in the morning and continues the day.
It’s not about right or wrong, or justice or injustice, if she was an angel or devil or death – it’s about if it should be done or not.

In Sardinia it’s understood to be true, that such women did exist.
Even today the problem of euthanasia is not easily talked about and we probably won’t ever find an answer that’s absolute.
This is a book that shows the town’s unsettling state of mind with such a powerful dignity.

🔽 Where to buy 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Accabadora: A Novel

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Accabadora 

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Accabadora [Lingua Italiana]

★★★★★ It’s poetic, it’s very Cocteau, also very French, very Nouvelle Vague. The whole story really builds up to the ending beautifully; self destructive and decadent but a perfect story. This book is an art itself.

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Les Enfants Terribles
Jean Cocteau, 1929
France
144 pages
Read 2023.01


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It's a title that comes up in any textbooks, but finally read it.
The most famous novel by the poet, Cocteau.

It's poetic, it's very Cocteau, also very French, very Nouvelle Vague.
The whole story really builds up to the ending beautifully; self destructive and decadent but a perfect story.

When we think about Paris and art, this is it.
It must have been a shock to the world, and the effect it gives has been imitated in repetition in numerous novels and films, this is the peak that we want to return to.
This book is an art, and it's at the highest point of the modern French art.

Now I must see the film too.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles)

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Les Enfants Terribles

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
I ragazzi terribili (Italiano)

★★★★★ What a book. It is beyond whatever you expected, it’s an experience, an experiment, it’s both the paradise and the hell for lovers of a humble act of “reading a book”

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If on a Winter's Night a Traveller 
Italo Calvino, 1979
Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore
Italy
272 pages
Read in 2025.10


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

What a book.
It is beyond whatever you expected, it's an experience, an experiment, it's both the paradise and the hell for a reader.

So the protagonist "you" start reading a book, but it abruptly ends because of an error, so you return to the shop for a new copy, but it's actually another book, which also abruptly ends, and this goes on.
Each time "you" want to continue the last book because it's so good but things go bonkers, and each time you want to share this experience with a girl, "Another Reader" you met at the start.
Is it just a vicious circle? A perfect read? 
When will it end, and what is an end, anyway?

It might put you off at the start because you get completely lost, and because the book stops exactly when you start to understand the setting of the book.
But hang in there.

What is a book.
What is a story, what is the role of an author, of a translator, and a reader, other readers, in this humble experience of reading a book? 
How are we connected, beyond everyday life and common sense, beyond time and space in this humble experience of reading a book?
It throws a lot of questions at you, but what this book gives you as its answer is the joy.
And in the end, you cannot help but smile.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller (Vintage Classics)

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore (Italiano)
 

★★★★★+♥ I now want to re-read, speak with other readers and find out what I’ll be finding out as I read again – it’s a book that will follow you around for the rest of your life. Dostoevsky, a great story teller.

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The Karamazov Brothers 
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880
ратья Карамазовы
Фёдор Достоевский
896 pages
Read in 2023.11

Wordsworth Classics
Translated by Constance Garnett (1912)


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

One of the greatest books ever written, and I'm one of millions to agree it is.

It is long, it starts slow, it is difficult, but as the story evolves it actually gets exciting, new mysteries are introduced, some doubts are resolved, and you simply cannot help but be curious.
Dostoevsky, a great story teller.
It's been read, re-read and studied many times by people around the world ever since it was written, so not much for me to add but I'd just say, I encountered a grand book.
I now want to re-read, speak with other readers and find out what I'll be finding out as I read again - it's a book that will follow you around for the rest of your life.

So it's so magnificent that it's a piece of human heritage, if it was not a book that could be reprinted, it'd be in a museum.
It has the suspense and the mystery to keep you turning the page, while it always goes back to the simple idea of good and bad, poor and rich, fortunate and misfortune, love, family, friendship, pride, desire and pity and all in between.

Despite the whole dark damming story, it had an incredibly bright and hopeful note. 
I'm also simply glad I completed it, it's an accomplishment itself, totally worth it, but now I am not sure if I get to read anything as good as this great story.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

The Karamazov Brothers (Wordsworth Classics)

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts and an Epilogue (Penguin Classics) 

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
I fratelli Karamazov. Ediz. integrale (italiano)

★★★★★ Raskolnikov is a problem, not because he causes problems, because he whispers to us to be free to be selfish and problematic to the society. Youth is not beautiful, it’s painful, but growing up with a lot of pride is intolerable. Masterpiece, as always.

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Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1866
Преступление и наказание
Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский
720 pages
Read in 2023.12


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

I had just finished The Karamazov Brothers recently, and I admit it's been following me around like a ghost, wanting something as grand.
So here it is, Crime and Punishment.

This one is less lengthy and the story is rather "easy" to follow, simply because it's about one person.
It's easier to follow but it's not easy to read.
But, there is not much to say about the story from my part, it's a masterpiece, everyone knows it.

The protagonist, Raskolnikov, is a problem, not merely because he causes problems, because he whispers to us, especially youths, to be free to be selfish and problematic to the society.
Such a provocative book.
"I'm special, I am allowed to be special, why do they treat me unfairly" this is the hatred and anger everyone can related to, anywhere in the world any time.

Youth is not beautiful, it's painful, but growing up with a bit of intelligence and a lot of pride (but without confidence) is intolerable. His innocence and delusion face the reality that is, life.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics)

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics)

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Delitto e castigo (Italian Edition)