Lord of the Flies
William Golding
A group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island try to govern themselves. A short, sharp classic.
All moods
Nobel Prize winners
You can start with a Nobel Prize winner without taking on a doorstop. These seven novels, each by a different laureate in Literature, are short or readable, and they range from a fable on an island to a quiet story set in a Seoul classroom. For more short books, try the short reads list.
Books to start with
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Gabriel García Márquez
A short, intricate novel that reconstructs the murder of Santiago Nasar in a Colombian town, and why nobody stopped it.
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison
Milkman Dead searches for his family's roots across generations. A rich, lyrical story of Black American life.
The Pearl
John Steinbeck
Kino, a pearl diver in Mexico, finds a pearl that could change his family's life. A slim parable of hope and greed.
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara, an Artificial Friend who runs on sunlight, narrates her time with a sick girl and her family. Gentle and thoughtful.
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
Lieutenant Henry, serving in the Italian ambulance corps in World War I, meets and loves Catherine Barkley, a British nurse.
Greek Lessons
Han Kang
In a Seoul classroom, a woman who has lost her speech learns ancient Greek from a teacher who is going blind.
How to choose
Start with the shortest. The Pearl is a brief parable with a tragic ending, and Lord of the Flies, a school staple, is a tense survival story that turns violent. Chronicle of a Death Foretold tells you the killing up front, so the pull is how it happened; it includes the slaughter of an animal.
Klara and the Sun is the gentlest, told by a robot-like Artificial Friend, though it has a sad undercurrent. Greek Lessons is quiet and slow, about loss of speech and sight. For heavier themes, Song of Solomon deals with racism and violence, and A Farewell to Arms covers wartime death and has a sad ending.
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