Read The Plague

Meursault shoots an Arab on a beach because of the sun; Camus in a hundred pages.

Seven years in a Davos sanatorium arguing about Europe before 1914.

Harry Haller, half man and half wolf, and the Magic Theatre; Hesse's midlife crisis.

Roquentin in a Normandy town discovers that existence is absurd, starting with a chestnut root.

A Brahmin's son leaves the Buddha to find his own way, and finds it at a river.

Two tramps wait by a tree for someone who does not come; the play of the century.

Three brothers, a murdered father and the Grand Inquisitor; Dostoevsky's last novel.

A bookish narrator and a Cretan who dances; Kazantzakis on how to live.