The Stranger
1942 · 123 pages
Meursault buries his mother without crying, takes a lover, and shoots a man on a hot Algiers beach. At his trial the tears he never shed matter more than the killing.
★ 8.9
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.
Notes from Underground
1864 · 136 pages
Holed up in a shabby Petersburg room, a spiteful clerk talks at you, insisting people will wreck their own lives to prove they are free. Every alienated narrator since speaks in his voice.
★ 8.6
Fear and Trembling
1843 · 158 pages
Abraham climbs the mountain to sacrifice Isaac, and Kierkegaard asks how obedience to God can require a murder. Faith suspends ethics altogether, and the believer cannot explain himself to anyone.
★ 7.1
A Hero of Our Time
1840 · 168 pages
Pechorin seduces, duels, and wrecks lives across the Caucasus, then records in his diary exactly why he does it. Russian fiction took its habit of merciless self-analysis from this bored young officer.
★ 6.6
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
1958 · 384 pages
Beauvoir rebuilds the pious Paris girlhood she fought her way out of, and sets against her own escape the fate of Zaza, the friend whose family refused her the man she loved.
★ 6.5
Existentialism Is a Humanism
1946 · 128 pages
Existence precedes essence, Sartre told a packed Paris hall in 1945: you invent yourself by choosing and may blame nothing. The student torn between the Resistance and his mother is told to choose.
★ 6.3