curated reading list

East of Eden

John Steinbeck · 1952

Flowers for Algernon

Daniel Keyes · 1959

The Myth of Sisyphus

Albert Camus · 1942

Animal Farm

George Orwell · 1945

White Nights

Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1848

Madonna in a Fur Coat

Sabahattin Ali · 1943

The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time. 'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.' A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul. 'Passionate but clear . . . Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla Özkirimli, writer and literary historian

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde · 1890

The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka · 1915

"The Metamorphosis" (original German title: "Die Verwandlung") is a short novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into an insect.

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath · 1982

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · 1963