Dream Big Book Club

Notes from Underground

Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Notes from Underground is a novella written in 1864 by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels."

The Devils' Dance

Hamid Ismailov

The Devils’ Dance brings to life the extraordinary culture of 19th century Turkestan, a world of lavish poetry recitals, brutal polo matches, and a cosmopolitan and culturally diverse Islam rarely described in literature.

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

This short novel is the tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

"Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hurston's best known work."

The Outsider

H. P. Lovecraft

"H. P. Lovecraft was one of the greatest horror writers of all time. His seminal work appeared in the pages of legendary Weird Tales and has influenced countless writers of the macabre. This is one of those stories."

The White Tiger

Aravind Adiga

Introducing a major literary talent, The White Tiger offers a story of coruscating wit, blistering suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating, and utterly inimitable narrator that this millennium has seen.

1984

George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four is George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian future in which everything and everyone is slave to a tyrannical regime.

Wonder

R.J. Palacio

Wonder is an inspiring tale of acceptance that encourages people to embrace differences. The novel follows Auggie, a young boy with a facial deformity in his first school experience.

Storm of Steel

Ernst Jünger

"Storm of Steel is the memoir of German officer Ernst Jünger's experiences on the Western Front during the First World War from December 1914 to August 1918. It was originally printed privately in 1920, making it one of the first personal accounts to be published."

After Dark

Haruki Murakami

A sleek, gripping novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the spooky hours between midnight and dawn, by an internationally renowned literary phenomenon.

The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka

One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition.

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

"Of Mice and Men narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States."

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed.

Ward no. 6

Anton Chekhov

Ward no. 6 is a short story by Anton Chekhov, published in Russian in 1892. The story is set in a provincial mental asylum and explores the philosophical conflict between a patient and the director of the asylum.

The Master and Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov

The novel is a penetrating philosophical work that wrestles with profound and eternal problems of good and evil. It is considered a 20th-century masterpiece.

The Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick

It's America in 1962. Some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Julia Alvarez

Uprooted from their family home in the Dominican Republic, the four Garcia sisters arrive in New York City in 1960. What they have lost - and what they find - is revealed in the fifteen interconnected stories that make up this exquisite novel.

Admiring Silence

Abdulrazaq Gurnah

It is a 1996 novel. It is Gurnah's fifth novel and was first published by The New Press on 1 November 1996. The plot follows an unnamed Zanzibari man living in England, after fleeing there in the early 1960s.

Lord of the Flies

William Golding

Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves.

The Leopard

Giuseppe Lampedusa

One of the greatest Italian literary works of the 20th century. Written by a Sicilian nobleman and set in the 19th-century during the the movement for Italian Unification, it recounts the decline and fall of Sicily’s aristocracy."

Chess Story

Stefan Zweig

Chess Story is Stefan Zweig’s final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942. It is the only story in which Zweig looks at Nazism.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a science fiction infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1969.

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

Nujood Ali

The internationally bestselling true story of the remarkable ten-year-old Yemeni girl who dared to defy her country’s most archaic traditions by fighting for a divorce

The Tell-Tale Heart

Edgar Alan Poe

A murderer is convinced that the loud beating of his victim's heart will give him away to the police.