7 More of the Best Fiction Books
My Book Recommendations
In my last article, I shared my recommendations for fiction books (you can find them here). Putting together the first list was relatively easy — after all, we all know what our favorite things are. My favorite fiction book — Anna Karenina, the most unusual book I’ve read — One Hundred Years of Solitude, my favorites from my teenage years — Master and Margarita and The Count of Monte-Cristo, my favorite Dostoyevski piece — the Brothers Karamazov and two personal favorites — Martin Eden and Lord of the Rings.
Yet, when I asked myself what would be my choices if I were to put together a list of seven more fiction favorites of mine, I realized choosing was going to be much more difficult. Some titles came to me quickly, others needed some thinking.
Again, three of the seven are Russian writers. Don’t be shocked — they are really that good. It has been a blessing to be able to read these in the original language and perhaps that explains the profound impact Russian literature has had on me (check out my article Why Read Russian Literature).
Here we go!
- The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, 1925
Bulgakov is one writer whose EVERY work I have read. EVERY ONE. Other than Master and Margarita, my favorites include The White Guard (loved it — it is in my top three novels about war after Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Remarque’s Everything is Quiet on the Western Front), The Fatal Eggs, Diaboliad, and A Young Doctor’s Notebook. But The Heart of a Dog is something else entirely — truly a special piece of literature.
You will notice that I have not put sci-fi on my lists, although I love this genre. I have read some amazing sci-fi books, including The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Jule Verne’s books, 1984 by George Orwell (though Orwell’s storyline is oddly similar (borrowed?) to We by Yevgeny Zamtayin’s, written over twenty years earlier), Dune by Frank Herbert, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and other books by Herbert G. Wells, Amphibian Man by Alexander Beliaev, Solaris and Invincible by Stanislaw Lem, Foundation by Isaac Asimov, Roadside Picnic, Monday Begins on Saturday and other books by Strugatsky brothers, and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut if I have to stop the list short. :)
Yet, The Heart of a Dog is going to be the only one that can be classified as a sci-fi satire. Bulgakov finds yet another way to make fun of the mighty Soviet Union — if you remember, he tried his hand at the supernatural fantasy satire genre in Master and Margarita. In this book, Bulgakov’s target is the Soviet effort to transform humans and make a “new Soviet man”. The story involves a stray dog Sharik, who goes through surgery and, well, gets transformed. I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t read it. But almost a hundred years after it was written, at only about 150 pages, it still packs a satirical punch. This book was banned for a very long time in the Soviet Union and was only allowed to be published in 1987 (!), just three years before the collapse of the empire.
- Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque, 1936
Remarque’s works have strong anti-war themes and his contempt for nazis was palpable. Perhaps politics have influenced people’s choices here, but while Remarque has been immensely popular in the former Soviet Union countries, his name rarely ever comes up when you ask people in the West about their favorite German writers — the usual suspects are Kafka, Mann, or Hesse.
Remarque is best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front (also an excellent book), a powerful account of young men’s experience in a brutal war. How youthful idealism and pursuit of glory are quickly replaced by daily horrors and apathy amidst the realities of war. While in this book Remarque very openly and clearly denounces war, his message is more subtle in Three Comrades. The story is centered in pre-World War II Germany and describes the story of three friends in an increasingly polarized and militant society.
For me, this is the best book about friendship. It made a very strong impression on me. In fact, pretty much every work by Remarque I read had a strong impact — Arch of Triumph, Heaven Has No Favorites, or The Black Obelisk — they all have a peculiar mix of a depressing, tragic setting, protagonists going through serious challenges and yet a strong sense of hope, even when the story does not have a happy ending.
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1868–1869
And again I skip the Crime and Punishment. Well, because everyone always mentions it and because the Idiot is AMAZING. Also, it was Dostoyevsky’s favorite work.
Exploring different themes, such as love, idealism versus pragmatism, atheism versus religion, trauma and guilt, the story is centered around the character of Lev Myshkin (the first name means lion, the surname means mouse), a man who is one of the kindest you ever find in fiction, Dostoyevsky plunges him into the tricky social life of Saint Petersburg, full of intrigue and back-stabbing. Throughout the story, other characters refer to him as an “idiot”, but he is a kind, intelligent, and thoughtful individual, who just won’t “play the game” like everyone else around him. He lacks pragmatism, seems unprepared for life, and is an example of best intentions sometimes resulting in serious harm to himself and others. Some see similarities with the character of Don Quixote, an idealistic fool, who makes a genuine effort to see the best in everyone. No wonder Myshkin utters the sentence that is one of the most famous Dostoyevsky quotes: “Beauty Will Save the World” by which he meant not just beauty as the appearance of a person, but beauty combined with truth and the good.
The novel also has two very interesting female characters in the story — Nastasya Filippovna, a strong, beautiful, and intelligent woman, struggling to deal with the effects of trauma and abuse, and veering towards “the dark side” and Aglaya Ivanovna, who is also bright and intelligent, with big ambitions, who starts at a somewhat of a high moral ground, but struggles to match Myshkin’s standards of humanity and compassion.
Like most other pieces of Dostoyevsky, the Idiot can have a transformational impact on the reader. A powerful story about the clash of the good, the innocent, and the kind versus the real world.
- Short Stories by Anton Chekhov
Ah, the master of short stories. One of the most influential writers ever, Anton Chekhov created amazing works of literature in the most concise format there is. “Brevity is the sister of talent” — he is known to have said, and well, he did not disappoint.
I know it is not exactly one work of literature that I am adding to this list, but Chekhov’s stories are so good, if you read them, you will forgive me. The stories are deep, yet familiar. He did not necessarily aim to create a clear narrative, but rather to tell a story that felt real, like everyday life, with its randomness and surprises. His characters are not extraordinary people, but the kind of people we all know and meet every day, dealing with everyday problems and living in everyday circumstances.
Here are two of my favorite Chekhov stories:
The Lady with the Dog (1899) — is a story of two unhappily married people meeting while on vacation in Crimea. At no more than 15 pages, the story manages to take us through a rich emotional journey of the two characters, exploring themes of love, adultery, and authenticity.
Ward number 6 (1892)— a story of a doctor in a mental asylum, into which Chekhov masterfully weaves themes of existentialism, societal judgments on the sanity of individuals (as opposed to medical diagnosis), suffering, and compassion.
I have seen different stories of Chekhov to appeal to different people. I have even had stories that I did not like that much upon the first read, only to rediscover and love them years later. So go grab a collection of Chekhov’s stories, read a dozen and surely you will find the stories that appeal to you.
- Don Quixote by Miguel Servantes, 1605–1615
I read Don Quixote only a couple of years ago and what can I say, I loved it. In a way, while we all laugh at Don Quixote’s “adventures”, we also quietly envy his ability to turn the mundane into a fantasy, something incredible and exciting. The title character and the phrase Don Quixote have become synonymous with the idealistic, the impractical, and even the mad. Yet, it also stands for honesty, dignity, and idealism — a man who genuinely wants to do good and save the world. He goes between periods of madness and sanity, during which he displace impressive intelligence.
The duo of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is also a great example of a hero and sidekick. Where Don Quixote is all about fantasy, Sancho is all about reality. One represents idealism, the other is symbolic of practicality.
Have you heard the phrase “tilting at the windmills”? It means attacking imagined enemies. It is a shame that the sum total of many people’s knowledge about Don Quixote is this episode with him launching himself at the windmills he imagined to be hulking giants. There is so much more in the story. Exploration of truth versus lies and fantasy, madness and sanity, class identity, social analysis, chivalry, romance, leadership, and more.
Here is my favorite quote from the book: “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams… Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be”.
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813
What can I say about Pride and Prejudice that has not been said already? Themes of love, marriage (arranged versus for love), parenting, class, money, pride, and prejudice. Witty, beautiful language. Incredible character development. The story of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. The danger of forming first impressions (incidentally, the initial title of the book was First Impressions) and the importance of acknowledging that everyone is a work in progress. And so much more.
Osten does such amazing work bringing us lively characters who are conservative, and proud, yet charming and funny. The dialogues are beautifully written. Character development is gradual and believable. The transformation Elizabeth Benning goes through, all the while adjusting her views of the people around her, is something we can all relate to.
Anna Karenina will forever be my favorite love story. But Pride and Prejudice is firmly the second. Now that I think of it, Jane Eyre is probably the third, followed by Evgeniy Onegin by Pushkin and La Dame de Monsoreau by Alexander Dumas. Add Remarque’s Three Comrades and Chekhov’s A Lady with the Dog to the list.
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1599–1601
Adding Hamlet to this list took some thinking. Surely, there are works of literature that I enjoyed more. But every reading of Hamlet leaves in me a feeling of awe. The titular character’s struggle in deciding which course of action to take — suffer in silence, perhaps commit suicide, or take action and risk everything — aren’t we all dealing with a version of such a choice?
To be, or not to be. Not a trivial choice. We intuitively respect Hamlet’s choice to do the right thing, to not stay silent, to take action. Yet Shakespeare makes us wonder — given how events unfold — would it not have been nobler if Hamlet had not done what he did? For his country? For his people? Was he being selfish by pursuing the course of action he did? It is not just to be or not to be. The world is rarely ever black or white. There is a lot of grey going around. It is not about simple choices. It is about understanding that every choice leads to consequences, often consequences we cannot foresee. It is about recognizing that sometimes the nobility we attach to our actions masks some degree of selfishness. And that sometimes when we decided to avoid what we feel is the selfish path is nothing but avoiding the noble choice.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and Macbeth are all excellent works of art. But Hamlet stands head and shoulders above them all in my opinion.
There you go. I have to say, some books got very close to this second list of my fiction recommendations. I considered 1984, War and Peace, Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre, Robinson Crusoe, The Three Musketeers, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and a handful of others. I even almost included Crime and Punishment. I did not consider In Search of Lost Time, Lolita, or Moby Dick — sorry fans of these books. But the seven I ended up selecting, together with the seven from the previous article are my absolute favorites. If you have not read them already, give it a shot!
