1932
Showing 41 works across all media from 1932
Brave New World
Babies are decanted from bottles into castes, everyone takes a drug called soma, and nobody is unhappy. Huxley saw that a tyranny of pleasure would hold better than one of fear.
Journey to the End of the Night
Celine's narrator carries his disgust from the First World War to colonial Africa, a Ford assembly line in Detroit, and a Paris suburb. He dragged spoken French into literature and made loathing exhilarating.
Light in August
Pregnant and walking from Alabama, Lena Grove looks for the man who left her. Nearby a man who cannot say whether he is black or white is running out of room.
The Sleepwalkers
Three novels set in 1888, 1903, and 1918 follow a Prussian officer clinging to his uniform, a bookkeeper demanding justice, and a deserter who feels nothing. Broch watches a whole value system dissolve.
The Radetzky March
A lieutenant knocks Emperor Franz Joseph off his horse at Solferino and saves his life. Three generations of Trottas ride that accident down into 1914, and the Habsburg empire dissolves around them.
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust
Marie-Thérèse asleep beside a sculpture of her own head and a philodendron, from the year Picasso could seemingly do nothing wrong.
Room in New York
He reads the paper, she touches one key of the piano, and we are watching from the street through their window.
The Dream (La Reve)
Marie-Thérèse asleep in a red armchair, her face split into curves. Picasso is said to have done it in a single afternoon.
Nude in a Black Armchair
The dark chair throws the body forward, all lilac and rose curves, a plant arching over the sleeper from behind.
Viper's Tangle
Louis, a rich dying lawyer, fills a long letter to his wife with decades of hatred and the fortune he means to withhold from his children. Mauriac tracks the moment the hardness breaks.
Reading (La Lecture)
Marie-Thérèse has fallen asleep over her book with her head on her arms, from the year Picasso painted her over and over.
This universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.
Grand Hotel
It took Best Picture without a single other nomination, which nothing else has managed: Greta Garbo says the line about wanting to be alone, and the one-building ensemble format begins here.