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livelihood Author's name: Cesare Pavese Nine days after completing his diary, "The Profession of Living," Cesare Pavese took his own life. He had taken an overdose of sleeping pills in a Turin hotel room shortly before. He had published his novel "The Moon and...

That other world Author's name: Azar Nafisi Although I know it will never end, I will not stop painting the second painting. My experiment has failed, and there is no better proof of this defeat, failure, or impotence than the paper on which I...

Orient Express Travel Diaries Author's Name: John Dos Passos The bow of the ship rocked as it hit a new, strong wave. A whirlwind hid the moon, and raindrops irritably sprinkled my head, then faded away, leaving behind wisps of moonlight drifting eastward where...

Aunt Julia and the screenwriter Author's name: Mario Vargas Llosa I continued to think about Pedro Camacho's life. What social milieu, what series of people, connections, problems, coincidences, and events resulted in that literary message (was it literary? If not, what was it?) that...

young man Author's name: Annie Ernaux In "The Young Man," Ernaux speaks in her own direct, frank, and non-fictional style about a love affair she had with a man about 30 years her junior. We read something similar in her novel "The Occupation," but...

Nine Essays on Dante Author's name: Jorge Luis Borges “Dante's Divine Comedy is not easy to read,” says Borges, “but with patience, it is very rewarding. First of all, there is a lot of suspense in it. It tells us about man's journey through...

Short Stories - Part Two Author's name: Jorge Luis Borges "My dear friend Paulino Keynes, who obtained for me the first volume of the Arabian Nights (London, 1840) in Lane's translation, and I discovered the manuscript which I am now going to translate into...

All the water is the color of drowning Author's name: Emil Cioran When tyrants satisfy their ferocity, they turn into good men. Things could have returned to normal, had it not been for the jealousy of the slaves, and their desire to satisfy their...

Beyond Good and Evil Author's name: Friedrich Nietzsche The book was first published in 1886. It builds on the ideas of his earlier book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and expands upon them, approaching them from a more critical and polemical perspective. Nietzsche completed the book...

simple passion Author's name: Annie Ernaux Despite the "simplicity" of the writing, it actually succeeds in raising many of these existential questions that surround us. It knows how to raise the "philosophical" question about our relationship with others, with sex, and even with writing...

Celtic dream Author's name: Mario Vargas Llosa The central theme of the novel "A Celtic Dream" revolves around denouncing and exposing the exploitation of humans in the Congo forests, once privately owned by King Leopold II of Belgium, and in the Peruvian Amazon, a...

Tales from the Widows' Village Author's Name: James Canyon On November 15, 1992, guerrillas storm Mariquita, a remote Colombian mountain village, forcing its men to join their ranks. Anyone who resists or refuses is immediately killed. Only widows and spinsters remain, along with the...

Magic Mountain Author's name: Thomas Mann Anyone who reads Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" is bound to experience suffering. The novel, published by Dar Al-Jamal and translated by Ali Abdul Amir Saleh, is nearly a thousand pages long and not only challenges the reader's...

Dangerous Relationships Author's name: Pierre de Laclos The word "deception" also means the arrangement of events in a fictional book within a set of influential and directed tricks. The word always indicates that someone is making someone else believe something that is not true....

The cave Author's name: Jose Saramago The man driving the van is named Siriano Algor, a potter by profession, and sixty-four years old, although at first glance his appearance suggests he is younger.

Mayta's story Author's name: Mario Vargas Llosa He looked about eighteen or nineteen years old, given his thinness, his beard, and his hair nearly all shaved. But Maita thought he shouldn't be so young. His hand gestures, his tone of voice, and his confidence...

woman Author's name: Annie Ernaux This book is not a biography, nor, of course, a novel. Perhaps it is something that lies between literature, sociology, and history. It was necessary for my mother, who was born into an oppressive environment from which she had...

Little Memories Author's name: Jose Saramago Little Memories is Saramago's autobiography, which deals only with his childhood. These are the memories he experienced and left their mark on his psyche, contributing to the formation of the first building blocks of the young child's personality,...

Year of Ricardo Reis' death Author's name: Jose Saramago Because of the density of this novel, which stems in part from its historical and cultural Portuguese references in its specificity, as well as from what constitutes its fabric, a game of back and forth...

hope Author's name: Gilbert Sinoué

years Author's name: Annie Ernaux What matters to her is capturing this temporal expanse formed by her passage on earth during a particular era... capturing this time that passed through her, this year in which she recorded her inner being only by living it....

occupation Author's name: Annie Ernaux Without a doubt, Annie Ernaux is today one of the most prominent and celebrated French novelists on the contemporary French literary scene. Each of her books is bound to generate a great deal of ink, press coverage, and criticism....

Eugénie de Franval Author's name: Marquis de Sade One of the greatest advocates of absolute or extreme freedom, and a rebel against religion, values, virtue, customs, traditions and laws prevailing in his society... based on his own deep knowledge of society - and as...

The last secret Author Name: Jose Z. dos Santos Sicarius turned off his phone and took one last look to his right, taking in the Judean Desert, with the blue pool of the Dead Sea in the center. Then to his left, where the...

Illiteracy Author's name: Agota Kristof The big notebook is about two children, twins who record the horrors of war and learn to spell life and confront it with the cruelty necessary for survival, while simultaneously learning to write and read. There is a double...

Evidence Author's name: Agota Kristof The novel "The Proof" by Hungarian writer Agota Kristof, is the second part of a trilogy, the first of which, "The Big Notebook," was published last year. This part deals with the fate of twin brothers who were separated...

yesterday Author's name: Agota Kristof The novel talks about the suffering of immigrants in a foreign country and their living conditions, their memories and dreams. These are characters who are not disconnected from their past, but at the same time, they expect nothing from...

Look at the lights, baby. Author's name: Annie Ernaux I stopped writing my diary. Like every time I stop recording the present, I have the feeling that I am withdrawing from the movement of the world, not only by abandoning my time, but also...

Raqqa Author Name: David Funkenos Natalie had a certain reserve (and this is a kind of Swiss femininity) worthy of a girl who passed through adolescence smoothly, alert and cautious. When she reached the age of twenty, she began to look to the future...

hopelessness Author's name: Vladimir Nabokov Despair is a tangible turning point in Nabokov's creative path, and it is distinguished from the works he wrote during the Russian era in that it came in the style of the traditional detective novel in that the narrator...