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As I have just finished re-reading Harold Pinter's play, Betrayal, it occurred to me that betrayal, lies, deceit, and duplicity are things that are at the heart of some of our finest literary masterpieces. From Julien Sorel in Henri-Beyle Stendhal's The Red and the Black to Cousin Bette in...

After two readings, Hugo Claus still fails to deliver the goods with his slim 1970s novel, Desire. Although the book possesses a certain brittle charm, and Claus tends to see life from an exquisitely ironic vantage point, the book left me feeling a deep sense of disillusionment. Wait, am I...

Few writers have had the impact on my life that Flannery O'Connor has had. There are a few definitive reasons for this. First, she was from Georgia, and her writing depicts mindsets and customs that are still prevalent in the Southern part of the United States today, some 45 years since her...

The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett "...people not only at roulette, but everywhere, do nothing but try to gain or squeeze something out of one another." Alexey Ivanovich, the lead character in Dostoevsky's novel, The Gambler, makes this shrewd...

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa "Only great passions are capable of great actions." So the narrator of what is arguably Machado de Assis' finest novel, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, tells the...

Sunflower by Gyula Krudy translated from the Hungarian by John Batki "You'll need life's disappointments and storms to find the path to happiness. Yes, go on and step out, have a good time and laugh a lot, dazzle and dance on. Sooner or later you'll have your fill of the masquerade." This...

Hunger by Knut Hamsun translated by Sverre Lyngstad "Here I was walking around so hungry that my intestines were squirming inside me like snakes..." This is just one of the passages in Hamsun's novel, Hunger, that forces the reader to empathize fully with a man who is literally starving to...

Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo translated from the Italian by William Weaver "You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide." If these words, spoken by Zeno Cosini, were heeded by him over the course of Zeno's Conscience, it would be a vastly different book. But Zeno is...

Beatrix by Honore de Balzac translated by Beth Archer "All men begin by promising us happiness, and then bequeath us deprecation, desertion, and disgust." These are Beatrix's words, and she is one of the key characters in Balzac's sweeping novel of the same name. Divided into two books...

Some Prefer Nettles by Tanizaki Junichiro translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker My rating: ****0 At the core of Junichiro's slim novel, Some Prefer Nettles, is a marriage that is in the process of disintegrating. Rather than husband and wife, the two married people, Kaname...

To my fellow list members: It has been brought to my attention by someone whose opinion I very much respect, that I may sometimes demonstrate behavior at this forum that is overly aggressive and a little bit "pushy." I think it's incumbent upon me to clarify a few things. In the first place...

The Czar's Madman by Jaan Kross translated by Anselm Hollo My rating: *****++ "Is it not--when all is said and done--the case, with regard to all the events of the world, that every visible occurrence is also, or perhaps merely, a hint of invisible connections, of some invisible worlds?" So...

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens There are some books that have been spoken about to such an extent, that a person feels as if they would have few original things to say about them. Charles Dickens' classic, Great Expectations, is one such book. From Pip to Estella to Miss Havisham, the...

Pan, From the Papers of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn by Knut Hamsun translated by Sverre Lyngstand My rating: ***** When speaking of the writing of Pan in a letter from Paris, dated October 1893, Knut Hamsun said, "My new book will be beautiful; it takes place in Nordland, a quiet and red love...

Quicksand by Tanizaki Junichiro translated by Howard Hibbett Few writers are capable of penning an erotically charged story with as much searing simplicity as Tanizaki Junichiro. Like The Gourmet Club, Junichiro's collection of six bewitching stories, Quicksand makes a vivid impression in...

Some authors are in a class entirely their own, and Edith Wharton is one of them. Edith was born Edith Newbold (Jones) on January 24, 1862, in New York, New York. Her family was socially prominent and affluent, and she was educated privately at home and in Europe. She learned several languages...

Although best-known for his short stories, Guy de Maupassant was a prolific writer of both short fiction and novels of the French naturalist school. Born Henry-Rene-Albert Guy de Maupassant on August 5, 1850, in Chateau de Miromesnil*, near Dieppe, France, Maupassant's mother, Laure, was from...

The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti translated by Nick Caistor The Shipyard is a novel without a plot. It is also the book that catapulted Juan Carlos Onetti to literary prominence in the world of Latin American fiction. And it is a brilliant read, both engrossing and enigmatic, moving yet...

A fiction-fellow from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, by the name of Laleh Khadivi is one of 10 writers to receive the 2008 Whiting Foundation's Writing Awards. At 31, the Iranian-born author, who spent her high-school years in Atlanta, has not yet published her first book. Her first...

Elinor Wylie, if she is known at all these days, is perhaps given more attention for her colorful personal life than she is given for her literary accomplishments. Born Elinor Morton Hoyt on September 7, 1885, in Sommerville, New Jersey, she came from a prominent Philadelphia family that boasted...