The Idiot
1869 · 656 pages
Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss clinic, epileptic and incapable of guile, and Petersburg cannot decide whether to adore him or use him. The world takes a genuinely good man apart.
★ 8.1
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Demons
1872 · 768 pages
Pyotr Verkhovensky assembles a revolutionary cell of five in a provincial Russian town and binds them together by having them murder one of their own. Dostoevsky saw the whole twentieth century coming.
★ 7.3
Jacques the Fatalist
1796 · 261 pages
Jacques and his master ride along while Jacques tries to tell his love story. Everyone interrupts, the narrator taunts you, and the interruptions become Diderot's case against free will.
★ 7.1
Embers
1942 · 213 pages
Two officers who trained together meet for dinner after forty-one years. The general has questions about a morning hunt and his dead wife, and the candles burn down while he circles them.
★ 6.5
Narcissus and Goldmund
1930 · 320 pages
Two friends split the world between them: Narcissus stays in the monastery with logic and God, and Goldmund walks out into women, wandering, and the Black Death, then carves it all in wood.
★ 6.3