The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, written by James M. Cain, an exponent in the hardboiled school of writing, were two of the great masterpieces in American literature, and sources for famous film noir adaptations. Both featured gripping tales of lust, murder, double crosses and betrayal, and abounded in nihilism and wry cynicism.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The epigraph of Things Fall Apart quotes the above four lines from Yeats’ poem. While the original lines of Yeats’ poem continue with blasphemous details of his own era – full [...]

In 1943 when George Orwell wrote Animal Farm, his caustic critique of Stalin’s Russia, the Soviet Union was so popular in the United States and Great Britain that he couldn’t find a publisher for his novel. In fact, the Russians were so strongly associated with the fight against the Nazis that it wasn’t until [...]

Ralph Ellison always insisted that his classic protest novel Invisible Man was neither a protest novel nor autobiographical. Still, it’s difficult to miss the parallels of the narrator’s and Ellison’s lives, and it’s even more difficult to miss that Invisible Man is clearly a protest novel. The question isn’t whether the book is a protest, rather; it’s what the book is protesting. The story’s narrator, who is never referred to by name, is a young man that begins by telling us his story from his subterranean home. Originally from the South…

The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel and is also his most well known novel. It’s a snapshot of an era Fitzgerald coined as the “Jazz Age”, the brief window of the 1920’s between the end of World War I and the great stock market crash of 1929, and in this snapshot Fitzgerald reveals a society obsessed with material wealth while simultaneously devoid of basic morals and good character. The story, as recalled by Nick Carraway, revolves around several failed romances—both legitimate and extra-marital—but focuses mainly on the affair..

1984 is nothing short of a classic and a must read. At times it’s frustrating because of over-simplified, and often unnecessary, clues to the reader. While the metaphor and allegory in the text are certainly complex, sometimes one wishes Orwell trusted his readers to do a little more thinking for themselves. Nonetheless, Orwell’s prose is powerful and brimming over with deeper underlying meaning. While the story is political in nature, and the plot is incredibly intricate, 1984 never stops reading as an entertaining novel. One can’t help but marvel at Orwell writing..

Love is rarely worthy of a chronicle if it is not cheeky, blasphemous, unexpected, life-altering, I wrote in my review of Memories of my melancholy whores. I guess I should have reserved that judgment for it probably holds true more for a book that is far more engaging, stirring, and famous, (or notorious, depending on which school of psychology you subscribe to). A book that has been discussed by every critic, psychologist and reader who has loved it or hated it, but couldn’t ignore it. A book called Lolita…

On the Road is considered the greatest book of the Beat movement and Jack Kerouac its unofficial spokesperson. Its tale of lost souls who dared to be free is timeless. Through its fascinating depictions of friendship, experiences on the road and the longing for ‘It’ – an expression that could signify anything from frenzy and exhilaration to salvation and bliss, the novel was way ahead of its time. The enormous impact of the book is as relevant today as it was groundbreaking then. Its tale of lost souls who dared to be free…

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic tale of murder, remorse and redemption set in the modern city of St. Petersburg follows the crime of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov and its consequences that haunt him to near insanity. What separates Dostoyevsky’s work from others is his ability to reproduce human psyche as it is and not cover it up with any kind of pretense. Aging almost 150 years, this fantastic work of Dostoyevsky only seems to get better and more appealing with time.

Writers often cannot reproduce the brilliance they exhibit in their masterpieces that give them a demigod-like stature in the literary world; a perfect case in point would be J.D Salinger, who went though an unenviable phase after his most famous creation became a worldwide phenomenon. After a book as revolutionary as Catcher in the rye, he probably tried too hard with his novella Franny and Zooey, but failed on most accounts –But all’s not lost. There are pleasant reminders for those of us who believe we have come too far too soon.