the plague

the plague by Albert Camus published 1946.

Insightful character sketches of citizens in a town called Oran beleaguered by the plague.


"In the early days when they thought this epidemic much like other epidemics, religion held its ground. But once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure. And all their hideous fears that stamp their face in the daytime are transformed in the fiery dusty nightfall into a sort of hectic exaltation, an unkempt freedom fevering their blood". - Tarrou

"Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn't come in contact with death; that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth with a capital T. But every country priest who visits his parishoners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its excellence" - Rieux

white nights

white nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky published in 1848. Typical romance story. Girl and boy meet. Fall in love. Have crisis. Crisis resolved. Live happily ever after. And at the brink of happiness this exceptionally lyrical Doestoevsky novellette kicks the protagonist to the curb.

the towers of trezibond

the towers of trezibond by Rose Macaulay published in 1956.

Yes, typically British. If I was in turkey, it probably would be much more interesting as the novel is an introspective religious travel log framed around "Aunt Dot". Aunt Dot was a feminist before her time, hoping to empower the women hidden behind the burka. Traveling to exotic destinations on a white Arabian camel, Aunt Dot and her companions create a stir.


"The fact was that Father Chantry-Pigg would not really have liked the Byzantines much had he encountered them, though he would have preferred them to Turks and other Moslems. He was not actually a sympathetic clergyman, and, had he been with his ancestor for the great attack on Constantinople in 1203, he would have been amongs those who, brandishing the cross above their heads, massacred and pillaged and looted in the name of Latin Christendom, helping to put to flame the great libraries whose loss he now deplored. He was better at condemning than at loving; aunt Dot used to wonder what Christ would have said to him."