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"Selected Short Stories by Maupassant" is a collection of twenty-nine short stories by Maupassant. The protagonists in the stories told by Maupassant are mostly minor characters. These characters make up the bulk of French society. The stories that happen around them constitute everything in secular society. Many chapters in this collection of novels, such as "Ball of Suet", "Two Friends", "The Necklace", "My Uncle Jules", "Simon's Father", etc., Have become world famous. Maupassant's short stories are a model of natural storytelling and a model of secular stories ascending to the classics.

George and Lennie are wandering workers with no fixed abode. Lennie is born with supernatural powers but has the mind of a child and often gets into trouble; George always helps him clean up his messes. The two men trust each other and depend on each other. They long for their own land to grow vegetables, raise pigs, and raise Lennie's beloved rabbits, where no one will ever fire them. But life always goes against expectations. Lenny's trouble again shattered the dream of the two people, and the beautiful life they longed for completely came to nothing... The little people living at the bottom of society pursue their dreams like innocent children, but when their dreams dry up, they run away like mice. No matter humans or mice, they cannot escape the unpredictable fate. As the title of the book implies: "Of mice and men alike, the best intentions often come to nothing."

In the literary history of France and the world, Maupassant, a 19th-century French writer, is not only famous for his novels, but also for his short and medium-sized novels, with more than 300 pieces in total, and is known as the "King of Short Stories". "The Complete Collection of Maupassant's Novellas and Short Stories" consists of five volumes. These short and medium-sized novels reflect the breadth of materials, covering all aspects of French social life at that time, allowing readers to have a glimpse of the master's superb artistic skills. The third volume includes the following 4 short story collections: "Mr. Balan", "Tuva", "Little Rock" and "Ola". Published from 1885 to 1887. Maupassant's novel style has become increasingly mature. The most famous of them is "Orla". At that time, Maupassant was troubled by various fantasies due to his illness, so this short story has a unique imagination and free rein.

This article is a collection of Chekhov's classic short stories and short stories. Most of Chekhov's short stories are excerpts from daily life. He is good at discovering people and things of typical significance from daily life, revealing the truth of life in ordinary stories, and revealing some major social problems in the depiction of ordinary trivial matters, making his works simple and as real and natural as real life.

This book contains a total of 31 short stories and short stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. "Rashomon" uses a weather-proof layout to push people to the limit of life and death choices, thereby showing the inescapability of "evil" and conveying the author's understanding of human nature. The plot of this work is simple and the language is concise. Although it is a historical novel based on old themes, it is endowed with a certain meaning and describes the people at the bottom of society who are tenaciously struggling to survive. It is not a historical novel in a simple sense. We cannot judge whether everyone's choice is absolutely right or wrong. We should treat the choice of survival and human nature rationally. Everyone may have been to Rashomon. The whole book depicts the contradictory relationship between survival and human nature, and each novel is thought-provoking.

The "Collection of Maupassant's Short Stories" includes famous works such as "Ball of Suif", "The Necklace", "A Normandy", "My Uncle Jules", and other lesser-known works, such as "Moonlight", "Simon's Father", etc. This world literary giant writes with ease, and only a few Words can fully reveal the vivid life and heart of ordinary little people - the bleak fate of the prostitute Ball de Suif in the 19th century, the price paid by the vain girl Mathilde, etc. Human nature is timeless, and it still resonates strongly with readers when read today, so it has become an enduring classic and has been passed down to the world. This edition is also translated by Mr. Liu Mingjiu, a master of French literature research and translation.

This book is an early novel by Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee. An old white girl living with her father in South Africa discovers something she hates - her father is having an inappropriate relationship with a young woman of color. She kept constructing fantasies in her mind that included getting rid of both of them, but in reality, everything revealed that the old girl herself wanted to have an affair with the family servant. This book is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, and the story it tells has no clear ending. Readers can only look for clues from the heroine's notes. The inner monologue of women blends harmoniously with the natural environment of the African land, making people extremely entangled but unable to stop.

In this collection of essays, Russell explores the social and political impact of his beliefs with characteristic clarity and humor. In Praise of Idleness is a masterpiece that only Bertrand Russell could have done.

This book mainly briefly describes a large lake called Liuhu near Ailao Mountain on the lower reaches of Panjiang River in southern Yunnan. Here, Zhao Lin and Long Qiaogu, who were anonymous, came out of the world for various reasons. Later, they returned to Liuhu and got married. They went to the mountains to practice with Wang Jin, and all three of them became Sanxian.

This book is the representative work of the owner of Huanzhu Tower, and is as famous as "The Legend of Shushan Swordsman". It focuses on describing the martial arts stories of Luo Lu, Qiu Yuan, Yu Nanqi, Di Shengnan, Di Wubao, Ji Yi, Lu Linggu, Yang Yong, Yang Yingxue, Ji Deng, Tao Jun, Yang Yi, Chen Taizhen, Hu Yanxian, You Huang, Fang Huan, Siming, Tu Lei, Yan Hu and other nineteen disciples of Qingcheng Sword Immortal in the early Qing Dynasty.

Ocean Chronicles, Artificial Intelligence, Doomsday, Experimental City... Six stories that combine science fiction, fantasy and horror, a collection of classics.

At this time, in the early years of the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty, the Yellow River was full of rapids, turbulent waves, and overwhelming water power, and the bottom layer was full of floating sand, making it impossible to build a bridge. Only during the consecration period of the tower top and the two major floods a year did the local gentry and merchants raise funds to hire seven large wooden rafts, linked with iron chains, to build a temporary pontoon bridge to ferry people. On weekdays, we rely on flat-bottomed square-headed ferries unique to the Yellow River. The river is wide and the waves are strong, and the boat is crossing diagonally. It takes at least more than an hour to cross the river. When the wind is not favorable, it may even flow diagonally for twenty or thirty miles, and it takes half a day to reach the shore. Another misfortune happened when a sudden arch of silt at the bottom of the river blocked the boat, making it impossible to come or go, sometimes delaying it for several days. The river is difficult to cross, and there are many supernatural sights in the Yellow River. Originally, everyone on the boat was superstitious, and the ferry was opposite the White Pagoda, so the legends became more and more popular.

"My Purple Scented Novel" tells the story of two writers, Jocelyn Tabet and Parker Sparrow, and reveals some of the dark sides of the literary world and the publishing world. From the first-person perspective of Parker Sparrow, the novel tells the story of two good friends who are obsessed with literature and started their careers at the same time, but their development trajectories are completely different: after Tabat accidentally became famous by writing scripts, his literary path became smoother and smoother, and he became a national writer in his middle age. Sparrow, who had published works in magazines before him, published several novels but was always depressed, until one time Sparrow accidentally read the first draft of a novel at Tabat's house. Under an uncontrollable impulse, Sparrow made a move that changed the fate of the two of them.

Unabridged version, Maugham's analysis of human nature, Maugham's former residence collection version, high score on Douban, a classic for women's spiritual awakening! Marquez, Haruki Murakami, George Orwell, Eileen Chang, and Naipaul unanimously recommend it. The Maugham House Collection version is highly recommended by Douban!

"Shadows on Distant Mountains" is Kazuo Ishiguro's debut novel, a masterpiece that is still being reprinted more than 30 years after its publication. The fusion and balance of "sentimentality and irony" are still memorable. The novel tells a memory full of mist, both real and illusory. After the war, a suffering mother and daughter in Nagasaki yearned for stability and rebirth, but they could never escape the shadows and inner demons brought about by the war. In the end, the mother and daughter successfully immigrated, and the daughter committed suicide as a tragic ending. At the end of the play, the remembrancer peels off his disguise, and the story is full of tragedy. The bilingual version of "Shadows of Distant Mountains" comes with the original text of the work, allowing readers to appreciate Ishiguro's exquisite and beautiful original English text at the same time, and enjoy double beauty.

This book is Nabokov's third novel. It tells the story of a chess genius who gradually became insane due to his long-term addiction to the game. The protagonist Luzhin was an unattractive, withdrawn and melancholic child when he was a child. He was like a mystery to his parents and the object of ridicule by his classmates. Real life always made him anxious, so he used chess as a refuge from real life. It turned out that he was a chess genius and became a chess master. However, he also paid a price for this: the game of chess gradually replaced his real life. In one game, his carefully designed defensive strategy became worthless due to the opponent's unexpected move. This reality made his mental world finally collapse.

The story of "Saturday" takes place on Saturday, February 15, 2003. The protagonist of the story, Henri Perroin, is a successful man - a famous neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and has a harmonious relationship with his grown-up children. However, the situation in the world he lives in makes him worried - the war in Iraq is approaching, and the general gloom and pessimism are spreading from New York and Washington... On Saturday morning, Perroian passed through the thousands of anti-war demonstrations that filled the streets of London and rushed to play squash with the anesthesiologist. In a minor incident, he had a minor run-in with a thug named Baxter. Perroian relied on his professional sensitivity to see that this guy had a brain malfunction - he had encountered a mental patient. He wanted to get rid of Baxter as soon as possible, but he didn't know that Saturday's troubles would start from here and get out of control...

How many bodies does a person have? Perhaps we have all heard, and many people believe, that people have more than one body. People can be separated, resurrected, and reincarnated. In addition to the flesh and blood body, humans also have a spiritual body, which is called a "spiritual body" in the Bible. Pavich tells us at the beginning of the novel that he has passed away. After his death, he (his second body) told us a story of a double body.

"Everything That Rises Must Converge" is a representative collection of short stories by the famous American female writer Flannery O'Connor. In the last ten years of O'Connor's life, she used her pen as a torch to write this short story collection "All Things Rise Must Converge", illuminating those weird but real corners of the American South. O'Connor used her unique black humor and strong satire to create eccentric, paranoid, selfish or hypocritical characters on the stage of the American South, a land full of contradictions, and directed scenes of absurd and bizarre dramas. In the end, all the stories came to an abrupt end in a strong emotional impact.

"Half of a Yellow Sun" is a lament written by the Nigerian female writer Adichie about the Nigerian Civil War in the 1960s (1967-1970). With an epic structure, the novel uses the changes experienced by several pairs of ordinary men and women in the Nigerian Civil War to interrogate how solid concepts such as identity, national boundaries, love, and friendship survived in the face of the absurd and brutal war... 13-Year-old Ugu comes from a poor family and works as a valet in the house of Odenigbo, a professor at the University of Nsukka. The learning opportunities given to him by his master gradually help him get rid of ignorance and superstition; Olanna, the daughter of the Igbo chieftain She is the girlfriend of Odenigbo. Her family had great reputation and wealth before the civil war. Olanna, who advocates freedom, has always kept a distance from her snobbish and opportunistic family. Olanna's twin sister Kenene has been taking care of the family business. She fell in love with Richard, a British journalist living in Nigeria. Richard, who hates the hypocrisy of post-colonialism, has always tried to record everything that this country has experienced fairly and objectively. When that extremely brutal war broke out, and when northern and southern Nigeria were driven by the curse of post-colonialism and headed towards the end of cannibalism, the fate of these protagonists suddenly changed, and their loyalty to self, friendship and love also faced severe tests...

What this book records is not the big events, but the small things I experienced during the fifteen months after the war began. Up to now, the European powers have been locked in this terrifying battle for more than two years. Many small countries were invaded; France was conquered. These major events have been reported in newspapers and will also be recorded in history. Life goes on. People still eat three meals a day, still fall in love, get married, and die of old age. Yet it seems to me that this natural disaster affected everyone in a thousand subtle ways, at least in Europe. These little things were insignificant to the tide of upheaval, but they were not unimportant to the people affected by them, and no one I know of thought them worthy of attention. So I thought it might be interesting if I could record those trivial things that seemed to have changed the course of my entire life before I forgot them. What this book describes is purely personal and private, and would be meaningless otherwise. But I still want to ask readers to believe that at this moment when the future of the entire world hangs on a thread, no one knows better than me how insignificant I am personally. --Maugham

Theo met Noah in South America and returned to Israel with her, settling in the desert town of Telkoda. As a town planner, Theo participated in the planning of the small town, which was very desolate because the nearby oil wells were not very productive. Theo and Noah, a couple with a fifteen-year age difference, are also increasingly estranged. Noah's student suffered a drug addiction and fell off a cliff to his death. The boy's father wanted to build a rehabilitation center in the desert town in memory of his son. Noah was obliged to participate in the preparation plan, but she did not expect how big the resistance would be. Can the two finally understand each other? Can the remaining tenderness in my heart withstand the harsh reality?

"I am a Cat" is Natsume Soseki's masterpiece. The novel vividly reflects the thoughts and life of Japan's petty and middle-class bourgeoisie at the beginning of the twentieth century, and sharply exposes and criticizes the "civilized and enlightened" capitalist society of Meiji. This work takes a poor teacher's cat as the protagonist and observes human psychology from the perspective of this anthropomorphized cat. This is a cat who is good at thinking, knowledgeable, full of justice and literary temperament, but he has never learned to catch mice until his death.

"Eugénie Grandet" tells a story about money destroying humanity and causing family tragedy. Centering around the central event of Eugenie's love tragedy, the novel is connected by three intertwined plot threads: the waves caused by the autocracy within the Grandet family, the open and secret fights between the bankers and notaries outside the family, and Eugenie's love for Charles Grandet, and the painful human experience of Charles' betrayal.

This book is an iconic work of the German Sturm und Drang movement. A young man named Werther fell in love with a girl named Lotte, who was already engaged to someone else. The setback in love made Werther heartbroken. Later, he committed suicide because he was out of tune with the feudal society and felt that his future was hopeless. The novel unfolds in the form of letters, recording the completely honest emotional experience of a young soul - the passionate but unattainable love for Lotte, the resistance to the order of reality, and the pain of the unattainable ideal. The gap between reality and ideals eventually pushed him into tragedy. This work shocked the entire European youth - Werther's sensitivity, loneliness and resistance became a symbol of the spirit of the times.

The full text is composed of dozens of long and short letters written by Qiao Ruosa to Daddy Long-Legs, thus showing how a girl who grew up in a long-term repressive environment has self-esteem, self-love, and self-improvement, and finally the process of her talent being recognized and getting love. This book is essentially a woman's personal growth history.

Ken Follett, author of "Fall of Giants" and master of all-night novels, has a new work! At the end of the 18th century, the British Industrial Revolution was quietly rewriting the world structure. Machines replaced manual work, factories swallowed up villages, and war spread across Europe. Technology is running wild, beliefs are being torn apart, old systems are collapsing, and a new era has yet to come. In such great changes of the times, a tenacious female textile worker, a small workshop owner who sympathizes with the workers, and a cloth merchant who survives in the cracks - they come from the bottom of society, but they struggle, fight, fall in love, and betray each other, looking for value and dignity under the rolling wheel of history. They failed to change history, but with the power of fighting against fate, they jointly wrote an epic that belongs to mortals. Ken Follett, with his usual profound writing power, outlines the pain and hope of social transformation, and tells how ordinary people struggling in the center of the storm become the masters of their destiny.

A tear-jerking work comparable to "Coco", it is written for all of you and me who were once children, to understand the life that our mother has never told; the famous writer Bi Shumin wrote a loving preface, and was recommended by the queen of talk show Oprah in her special episode. "Almost everyone, no matter how happy they may appear on the outside, has a small place deep inside them where they hold a loved one who has passed away and longs to be reunited one day." - Mitch Albom. Let a long-dead relative spend another day with you. Only one day. If you can do it, do you need such an opportunity? The opportunity, at an awkward moment, fell to Charles Bennett. The retired baseball player could no longer find any reason to live amidst the frustration and alcohol consumption - his career was on the wall, his marriage was broken, he was addicted to alcohol, and his family was betrayed and separated. Even his daughter's wedding was unwilling to let him show up... Charles had the idea of ​​​​suicide. He thought that as long as a high-speed car and a selfless run, he could wave goodbye without taking away a single cloud. However, in the flash of lightning, his physical body wandered between this place and the other side; when he suddenly woke up, he actually saw his mother who died unexpectedly many years ago. Mitch Albom's perception of life is like an ever-growing seed. It sprouted in "Tuesday", drew a long arc in "Five People You Meet in Heaven", and firmly took root in "Reborn in a Day". The soil is the state of the world and the human heart, and the root is love.

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The death of any one leaves me somewhat deficient, for I am inseparable from mankind; so never ask for whom the bell tolls; for you the bell tolls. --John Donne (British poet) "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is one of Hemingway's major works. Robert Jordan, an American young man, volunteered to join the Spanish government army and engage in blasting activities behind enemy lines. In order to cooperate with the counterattack, he was ordered to contact local guerrillas to complete the task of blowing up the bridge. In the midst of the raging war, he fell in love with Maria, a little girl who had been raped by the enemy, thereby smoothing out the trauma in Maria's soul. In three days, Robert experienced the conflict between love and duty and the test of life and death, and his humanity continued to sublimate. On the way to retreat after the bridge was blown up, he gave up his hope of survival to others, but his thigh was broken by a cannonball. He stayed alone to stop the enemy, and finally gave his young life for the Spanish people.

A masterpiece by "Master of Storytelling" Somerset Maugham, a classic translation by famous translator Fu Weici, and highly recommended as "a good book". The British painter in the novel is based on the French post-Impressionist master Paul Gauguin. The protagonist was originally a successful securities broker, but became obsessed with painting after reaching middle age. He suddenly abandoned his home and went to Paris to pursue the ideal of painting. He finally chose to abandon the civilized world and fled to the isolated island of Tahiti in the South Pacific. There he finally found the tranquility of his soul and the atmosphere suitable for his artistic temperament, and created one artistic masterpiece after another that shocked later generations. Through the life experiences of such a geek who devoted himself to the pursuit of art and was ignorant of the world, Maugham deeply explored the origin and essence of art, the relationship between personality and genius, as well as the contradictions and interactions between artists and society, art and life, and other thought-provoking issues.

"The Story of a Donkey's Skin" has a magical and realistic color that is rare in Balzac's works. It is a classic philosophical novel that combines criticism, reality, and symbolism. At the beginning of his creation, Balzac aimed to bring together his personal life experience and philosophical thoughts to respond to the changes in society at that time - "Money is the only God." The book visualizes the contradiction between desire and life as a donkey skin. With this donkey skin, all your wishes can be fulfilled, but each time the donkey skin shrinks a little, until it disappears and your life is over. The person who owns the donkey skin is lucky, he can get everything, but he is also unlucky, because in the face of death, he dares not ask for anything. "Donkey Skin" made Balzac, who had been writing silently for 10 years, become a best-selling author in one fell swoop. Three years later, we began to build on this "Human Comedy", which is truly a foundation work.

"Laughter in the Dark" was written in Berlin in 1932 under the title "Camera Obscura". It was published in Paris and Berlin. It was translated into English by Way Loy in 1936 and published in London under its original name. In 1938, it was significantly revised and re-translated by Nabokov himself and published in New York under the name "Laughter in the Dark". The novel imitates the kind of cheap love triangle stories popular in movies in the 1920s and 1930s. It uses the movie as its title at the beginning to introduce the relationship between the main characters. The actor Obinus wants to use the new technique of animation to "animate" the paintings of ancient masters, and proposes to cooperate with the caricature painter Rex. Obinas fell in love with the theater usher Margot at first sight. Margot, who was "obsessed with watching movies," dreamed of becoming a movie star. When she was convinced that he belonged to a class that could "provide the conditions for her to be on stage and screen," she decided to associate with him. The banquet hosted by Obinas to entertain the stars creates an opportunity for Margot to reunite with her former lover Rex, thus forming a triangle relationship until the novel ends in tragedy.

A

American young man Larry once participated in World War I and witnessed the ruthlessness and cruelty of war, so he was confused about life. After the war, Larry was eager to seek the value and meaning of life. He broke off his engagement with his fiancée, wandered around Paris, and traveled around the world from Paris. Later, he had an epiphany in the mysteries of Indian religion and had a great sense of enlightenment about life. Then he returned to the United States and lived a life of "hermitism in the city". Maugham vividly describes Larry's journey of searching for the meaning of life, revealing the contradiction between spiritual pursuit and materialism. The protagonist Larry is based on the philosopher Wittgenstein, vividly and profoundly showing the mental journey of Western intellectuals searching for the meaning of life.

This novel is first of all a satirical work, a "slander", and its object of ridicule is the various evil habits in the British literary world at that time represented by Driffield (alluding to Hardy - although Maugham once publicly denied it) and Arroy Gere (alluding to Hugh Walpole) in the book, just like a British "The Scholars". "Bi Hua Chai Video" is also a hymn, praising Driffield's ex-wife and the heroine Lucy in the book: this image of the charming Earth Mother can be called the most charming female character in Maugham's works. This image has been haunting the author for decades. In his mind, he had long thought about writing it into his own works but struggled with the opportunity. It was not until the writing of "Bi Huachai Video Recording" that this long-awaited opportunity finally came into being; Maugham himself also frankly admitted that this was the most touching female image he had ever created.

During a chance visit, Fritz fell in love with the 12-year-old girl Sophie. She is not beautiful, she is not religious, she likes to laugh. In just fifteen minutes, she came like a mysterious and transcendent force and became his wisdom, his spiritual guide, and his blue flower. Because of love, an ordinary girl may become an eternal star in a man's heart and start his romantic life. The novel is based on the early experience of the German poet Novalis and imagines the legendary life of the Blue Flower poet. The encounter with Sophie became a turning point in his life and creation. Throughout his short life, he was always pursuing the immortal and fleeting blue flower.

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Peri Medea, also known as the Triple City, is the bride of the sea and the mistress of the civilized world. It is a country of its own and has stood for thousands of years. Bardas Loredan lives in an inconspicuous corner of the Lower Town slums. His background is not difficult to find out, and no one cares about his past; his profession is a bit special, as he is a court swordsman who relies on his excellent swordsmanship to help clients litigate cases, but he can be considered quiet and low-key. No one knows what kind of destructive power all these things put together contain. The way of heaven is unpredictable. When the wheel of history begins to turn, some people are mercilessly run over, some take chestnuts from the fire, and some try to stop them, but inadvertently add force...

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The novel tells the story of a young couple, Frank and Amber Wheeler, who lived in the suburbs of Connecticut on a road called "Revolutionary Road" in the 1950s. Many middle-class families similar to them lived in the nearby community. Frank (also meaning "frank") is a down-to-earth corporate white-collar worker, while April (also meaning "April"), a housewife, is lively, romantic and full of fantasy. The gap between ideal and reality put their relationship into trouble, and the increasingly frequent quarrels almost suffocated the two. Epper's plan to move to Europe to find himself once saved the crisis and gave them a brief hope of changing their lives. However, the plan was ultimately shattered and their fate was irreversible. It slides into tragedy... As Yates himself said: "The characters in my novels are all within the limitations of their known and unknown. They want to be the best and do what they can't help but do, but in the end they inevitably fail because they can't help but go back to their original appearance."

After burying his father, Nathan Zuckerman, who was in his late teens, suddenly suffered from an undiagnosable pain that spread from his shoulders and neck to his torso, and even his mind was occupied by this pain. No doctor knew where his ailment came from. He had to rely on painkillers to survive, could not continue writing, and even his movements were hampered by pain. Bored, he began to let his mind wander, recalling his failed marriage and family relationships. Outbursts of extreme nostalgia and ambition to conquer his illness, Zuckerman determined to return to his alma mater, the University of Chicago, where he would study medicine... Rashness and meticulousness, lyricism and irony blended together, admonitions and confessions running through it, with a knowing, benevolent authority. Featuring some of the funniest and most brutal scenes in Philip Roth's novels, this is a grand comedy about illness.

"Songs from the Sad Cafe" is a collection of Carson McCullers' finest short and medium-length works. There are 7 works including the classic and handed down Song of the Sad Cafe and Childhood, among which "The Song of the Sad Cafe" is the most famous. The novel tells the weird and absurd love story between Miss Amelia, the criminal Marvin Macy and the hunchback Raymond in a small town. In a weird, mysterious and absurd way, it expresses a human theme as eternal as love - loneliness. Love is not the salvation of loneliness, absurd love confirms the necessity of loneliness.

Bipolar disorder is both youthful and life-threatening. Philip Roth, the No. 1 American literary figure, is a well-received work, the Guardian's Book of the Year, and a popular and high-scoring work on Goodreads and Amazon. He uses a national anthem to hold the United States to account for its history and reality, and writes about an emotion that confronts ubiquitous spiritual circumcision. A "March of the Volunteers" sings the suffering behind individual anger. When the world becomes a slaughterhouse soaked in blood, individuals, especially young people, in the context of war, are so innocent and helpless. "Rage" is set against the backdrop of the Korean War and tells the story of the rebellious struggles of a group of young and restless college students at Winesburg College in northern Ohio. The protagonist is Marcus, a young man from a Jewish family. He seeks a breakthrough in identity and spiritual freedom among family, faith, love, and secular rules. In the process of searching, he conflicts with the surrounding environment. After passive endurance and angry struggle to no avail, he finally reaches a tragic ending.

The representative work of Richard Yates, "the writer among writers", "the great writer in the age of anxiety" and the author of "Revolutionary Road". "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" describes the lives of ordinary New Yorkers in the 1950s and 1960s after World War II in a cold way. It writes about eleven kinds of lonely lives. The protagonists are all people who lack security and live unsatisfactory lives: fired white-collar workers in Manhattan office buildings, people with outstanding imaginations A taxi driver, a young man who has been frustrated many times but wants to be a writer, a man and a woman who are about to get married but are extremely confused, an eccentric old teacher, a newly transferred primary school student, a tuberculosis patient, an old and sick wife, a jazz pianist, a depressed military officer and a retired soldier, etc. Yates writes about the ordinary lives of ordinary people, describing their loneliness, loss and despair. He himself once said: "If there is any theme in my works, I think there is only one simple one: people are lonely, no one can escape, and this is their tragedy."

"Eugénie Grandet" takes the father's wealth accumulation and the daughter's love tragedy as the main lines, depicting a vivid picture of provincial customs. The novel has a classical structure and concise writing style. It is a simple epic that has been widely loved by readers since its publication.

"The Plague" is a Nobel Prize-winning work by French philosopher and writer Camus. It tells us the story of the people of Oran, represented by Dr. Rieux, facing the sudden threat of plague and death, from initial doubts and panic to the final fight against the epidemic together, facing the disaster, and finally winning. In a city captured by the plague, a group of desperate people redeem themselves. It shows the fighting spirit of people in trouble and their pursuit of justice. It reminds each of us that in a crisis moment that is not what we want, the only right thing is to choose to walk with kindness and sincerity.

"This kind of love is destined to be destructive." The author of "Lolita" and the novel master Nabokov's masterpiece, the passion, intoxication, madness and fall of a chess genius, using scalpel-like precision to write about the hidden corners behind the genius boy. "Defense" is a masterpiece of Nabokov's novels recognized by the 20th century novel master. It tells the story of a genius boy who gradually becomes insane due to his long-term addiction to chess games. Passion, intoxication, madness and decline are the themes throughout the novel. The protagonist Luzhin was an unattractive, withdrawn and melancholic child when he was a child. Real life always made him feel anxious, so he used chess as a refuge to escape from real life. It turned out that he was a chess genius and became a chess master. However, he also paid a price for this: the chess game gradually replaced his real life, and his real life became a dream. Nabokov devoted great enthusiasm to this early work, outlining the hidden corners behind the aura of genius with anatomical precision.

Z

The story takes place in Chongqing, the capital of the Nationalist Government in 1945. Here gathered a group of people who were feasting, feasting, and living in intoxication. Everything revolves around money. Corruption of officials, speculation by businessmen and bankers, and women being swindlers have become a common trend. The novel uses the clues of Wei Duanben, a young civil servant, and his beautiful but vain wife Tian Peizhi as they live together and break up. It takes the opportunity of many characters to rush to buy gold savings certificates to make the country's hard-earned wealth, and unfolds a complicated story. When the Anti-Japanese War was won, everything for the speculators was in vain. The work directs criticism towards the ugly, humble world in the Kuomintang-controlled areas on the eve of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War. It reveals the loss and struggle in the face of human nature and money in a special era.