What Are The Must Read Novels Before You Die?

They say that truth is stranger than fiction.. But the task of a fiction writer is not a child’s play! The amount of efforts which a fiction writer puts to bring the truth of our existential world through their characters is insurmountable. Novelists struggle to bring the sentiments associated with the realities to the world and sometimes those efforts bring us so closer to the truth that no documentary or motion picture can ever aspire to achieve. Everyone has their list of such novels and such experiences, i have mine too.. I recommend following 10 novels to everyone before you depart..

1. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

This mesmerizing novel is probably the masterpiece of Hermann Hesse. The essence of his writing has always been to edify the eternal battle of flesh vs soul to the readers. Those who have read it may agree with me that it is not a novel which can be forgotten once read rather it can be read anytime when life puts you under its inscrutable phases and you wish to take a dive or seclusion or refuge to something that may bring you clarity of life’s nomadic and inscrutable ways. Those who have not read it, just give it a try and experience the world of Gautama before he was Buddha.. When he was Siddhartha!!

2. 1984 by George Orwell

There is a famous saying about George Orwell, if he had been at the Biblical Times, We would have known him as a prophet in our modern times.. And why not? The astounding prose of this brilliant author will grip your mind like a vice and the worlds will penetrate your mind to your very soul.. What’s amazing is how he imagined the power as a factor of decoding human character and justifying its limits and actions to sustain it.. Give it a try once as no words are enough to describe this piece of art from Orwell..

3. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Memories are probably the most important aspect of everyone’s lives. How they segue in our lives without interrupting its linearity yet dragging us against in an unseen miasma is perplexing; yet more perplexing is to put all these amazing aspects of memories in unforgettable and ground-breaking prose. Mr. Ishiguro has been blessed with the art of bestowing words to the memories and deciphering the collusion with other mysterious forces of human character to make us strong and weak in times of our lives! If you want to feel more of this strange unison, read this work of art and feel how memories grip human mind for better and worse!

4. Amsterdam by Ian Mcewan.

If there is one author famous for his research before bringing his characters to life, its him.. Ian Mcewan! Never for once you will feel while reading his novels that its not been told by real people having real life roles as been bestowed to his fictional characters. Amsterdam is an elegy of human mind and friendship. How two people who have seen their good and bad, know each other inside out can be the judge to something more than life! For some, this book has been pitch dark but to some it has been an unforgettable experience..

5. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

When this book won the 2013 Man Booker prize for fiction it was special, for it was won by the youngest author in the history of the prestigious award. I was too skeptical whether to give it a try to this 800+ pages long novel or not, but when i read the review of one of the judges of the Booker prize jury that reading this novel was having an experience of taking a perpetual shower, i went for it.. And believe me, this book lived up to its expectations. It was un put down able and unforgettable till day!

6. Death comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Let me tell you, not all books on morality and finding purpose in life are like your mind being bulldozed over and over by cascades of comparisons and preaching! Some are written tenderly, craftily, with experience that get so deeply etched in your heart that even if you are an atheist, the experience of reading it will stare in your eye and will force you to think, “Hey man, for whom they did all this for??” The author takes us to the time when religion was at its inception in the new found lands and the efforts of some pristine souls who did not sacrilege the words of God for their own selfish means.. Read it for you may know not all God-men are mean and selfish!

7. Herzog by Saul Bellow

Everybody can go insane in life and anyone can be tested to the extreme of one’s limits by life. But who could imagine to write a novel on such a character? This is a modern masterpiece. I wont be able to justify the efforts and talent of the author who could imagine to write such a brilliant novel. Probably, Nobel prize in literature can be one small tribute to author’s brilliance!

8. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

I recommended this amazing yet tormenting masterpiece to many of my friends and let me be very honest, hardly any of them could muster the courage to complete it till the end! Why? why they couldn’t finish it? I tell you the reason. Virginia Woolf was one of the pioneer authors to have introduced the technique of “Stream of Consciousness” into the literature world. Like in real life, she bestowed the power of not moving linearly but rather haphazardly in their fictional universe too. At one moment, the author dreams of the glorious old days of her life and in the very next moment she feels the enormity of the present who drags her down to the very moment through the clutches of her son wrapping around her wrists, whilst the future is staring at her insouciant from behind the curtains.. all happening at once in the mind and on the pages of the novel.. It will take patience, courage and in the end only admiration for Mrs Woolf’s achievement of a lifetime!!

9. A bend in the River by V. S Naipaul

There was a time in my reading history when i was literally starving for good reads and then i was recommended to read this novel by one of the greatest authors of our times and this book literally resuscitated my fictional interest and above all the faith that it is fiction alone that can most accurately edify the plight of human in distress and perpetual agony. For years, people are meditating on the atrocities inflicted upon people in Africa by their own people and people from across the world but it is Mr. Naipaul, who could personify the elegy of the unknown million African deaths that we don’r know of! This deftly written piece of art will not only be like a jolt on your consciousness but also like an assurance that fiction has not yet dilapidated!

10. Do not say we have nothing by Madeline Thein.

Whenever an empire is built, its never built clean! There are always real sacrifices and sacrifices of interests and ideologies of millions of people to have that empire which will serve the purpose of mass- The purpose to survive! Yet once in the lifetime of that empire, people find the courage to stand for their dreams, their freedom, their interests against that very empire which once bestowed them of all this! The consequence- you are crushed, wiped off from the very face of the history and worse, memories of your loved ones too, at least in efforts if not for real! Yet no matter how powerful you are, you can never see the complete life of a person, you can try to be his God, but you can never take away the freedom of Choice, even if it is one last contemptible whiff of a breath from the passionate, ardent one!

Read this amazing work and you will know what it means to have freedom bestowed to you in silver platter and then cursing your motherland when people around the world are still struggling to give shape to their dreams, carved somewhere inside their muted souls!

P.S- I may have missed many deserving ones which i have read too and firmly wished to have them in the list, but memory could only produce this list!!