Myths of the Modern World

Unfolding over a single day—June 16, 1904—in Dublin, Ulysses is a kaleidoscopic journey through the human mind that revolutionized the novel form. The story follows three central characters: Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser; his wife Molly, a singer; and Stephen Dedalus, a young intellectual and aspiring writer. Structurally mirroring Homer's Odyssey, each of the novel's eighteen episodes corresponds to a specific adventure of Odysseus, transforming the banal events of an ordinary day—buying soap, attending a funeral, eating a sandwich—into an epic of mythological proportions. Joyce deploys a dazzling array of literary styles to capture the texture of reality, from newspaper headlines and stage play dialogue to the famous stream-of-consciousness technique. This approach allows us to hear the characters' unfiltered thoughts, revealing the chaotic, bawdy, and beautiful flow of their inner lives. It is not just a story about Dublin; it is a comprehensive encyclopedia of the city and a profound exploration of memory, grief, nationalism, and the human body.

The defining masterpiece of magical realism. This epic saga chronicles the rise and fall of the Buendía family in the mythical town of Macondo, blending political reality with flying carpets and yellow butterflies. The novel spans seven generations, from the town's founding by José Arcadio Buendía to its apocalyptic destruction. García Márquez weaves a tapestry of cyclical time, where history repeats itself and the characters are trapped by their own solitude. The novel explores the history of Colombia, from civil wars to the banana massacre, through a lens where the miraculous and the mundane coexist matter-of-factly. It is a vibrant, tragicomic portrait of a family and a continent.

A vast, breathing ecosystem of humanity. Against the apocalyptic backdrop of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, Tolstoy weaves the lives of five aristocratic families into a tapestry of history. The novel moves seamlessly from the ballroom to the battlefield, exploring the lives of hundreds of characters, from emperors to peasants. At its center are Pierre Bezukhov, a bumbling idealist searching for meaning; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, a cynical soldier seeking glory; and Natasha Rostova, a spirited young woman full of life. Through their journeys, Tolstoy investigates the nature of history, free will, and the search for a good life. It encompasses the trivial and the eternal, showing how the great events of history are made up of millions of individual decisions.