'Candide' by Voltaire

When one is recommended a book by a 300 year old wig-wearing, French intellectual chances are they will not be expecting a fast-paced and maniacally violent, black comedy adventure. Candide is not having much luck in life, for wherever he goes, over 100 pages of floggings, flayings, humiliations and volcanic eruptions seems to follow. A philosophic in-joke on the nature of fate and optimism hidden beneath as a torrent of macabre, swashbuckling slap-stick. 

160 Pages

Voltaire, Cuffe, T. and Wood, M. (2005). Candide, or Optimism. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books.

'The Pearl' by john Steinbeck

Steinbeck is no stranger to the novella and his shorter writings are just as much-loved as his longer works (perhaps even more). Of them, for emotion, economy and adventure, The Pearl is hard to surpass. 

   Kino, a Mexican pearl-diver, has found the biggest pearl anyone in the village has ever seen and everything is going to change for him. His son will receive the medical attention he needs, will be educated in the city and his descendants will never be peasants again, and his wife will wear new-made clothes. But in the village envy quickly turns to evil and while the pearl-buyers undercut and baffle him, Kino inadvertently kills a man in the pearl’s attempted robbery. He is now an outlaw, and must run for his life. 

128 Pages

Steinbeck, J. (1945). The pearl ; with an introduction by Linda Wagner-Martin. Penguin.

'Hadji Murat' by leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy is famous for his sprawling, thousand-plus page epics, but even so (especially?) it's through his shorter fiction that the modern reader will gain fast appreciation for the iconic writer and his classic gods-eye-view. 

Hadji Murat is the notorious but mysterious Tartar chieftain that has terrorised the Russian army in the Caucasus mountains for years. But now, pressured by an inter-tribal blood feud, Hadji Murat must defect to the Russians to save his own life. And so plays out a story of a culture clashes, old scores, violence and morals. Perhaps containing some of Tolstoy’s greatest action scenes and most-haunting ending (all the more as this was his final work), this is a fantastic piece of less-common historical fiction that deals with tensions still-relevant today.
192 pages

Tolstoy, L., FitzLyon, K. and Hughes, J. (n.d.). Hadji Murat. 

'Despair' by Vladimir Nabokov

One day, as Hermann Hermann strolls the streets of Prague, he discovers a man who he believes to be his exact doppelgänger. What starts out for Herman as a case of harmless, though particularly eccentric narcissism quickly becomes dark and obsessive. One of the best earlier Eurocentric works from the creator of Lolita, a svelte and easily digested comic-thriller about violence, death and delusion.

176 Pages

Nabokov, V. (2000). Despair. London: Penguin.

'The Outsider' by Albert Camus

The most famous novel from existentialist icon Albert Camus. It has everything that makes people want to read books; it’s fast, plain spoken and deeply thought provoking. After Meursault kills another man on the beach in a moment of sun-blinded confusion, he is arrested and taken to trial. There, he is accused not so much for the murder, but for his entire life of non-emotion (exhibit A - he did not cry at his mother’s funeral).

   A week ago he was on holiday - now he’s sentenced to death. Both a snappy introduction to existential lit and a lesson in philosophic cool; a must read for everyone.

128 Pages

Camus, A. (2010). The outsider. London: Hamish Hamilton.

'The Metamorphosis' by Franz Kafka

Kicking off with one of the most famous opening lines in literature (‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect’) what follows is the absurd and tragic story of Gregor’s new life as a massive cockroach. From the immediate anxiety of not being able to make it to work, to the long-term depression of his family ignoring his obvious problem, what may have appeared on the surface as a fairly ridiculous idea for a book quickly becomes a deeply moving and relatable experience. Well worth the short amount of time it takes to knock over.

54 Pages

Kafka, F. and Hofmann, M. (2008). Metamorphosis and other stories. New York: Penguin Books.

'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson

Yes this story is a classic amongst classics, but did you know it’s only about 70 pages long? There’s an ugly violent man on the loose in gaslight London, assaulting and horrifying innocent people under the cover of dark. But somehow through the aid of an upstanding gentleman he continues to evade capture... A great, era-legit read and crime/horror crossover. 

224 pages (edition includes several stories)

Stevenson, R. and Mighall, R. (2003). The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other tales of terror. London: Penguin.

'Breakfast At Tiffany's' by Truman Capote

Holly Golightly is a beautiful and (ambiguously) popular young lady in 1940’s Manhattan. She doesn’t work but survives off the kindness of the men she's dating. But none of the them are as obsessed with Holly as her neighbour and narrator, who for reasons of his own is determined to unlock the secrets of this unknowable girl. 

   A piece of deft and beloved literature that even having no prior experience with, will be hard to read without seeing Audrey Hepburn mouth the words on the pages. 

111 Pages

Capote, T. (2000). Breakfast at Tiffany's. Penguin.

'The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea' by Yukio Mishima

Noburu is going through an awkward phase. His mother is falling in love with a sailor shore-leaved in Yokohama and he’s the ‘number three’ in a secret club of adolescent intelligentsia. While he's alternating between awe and disturbing envy for his mother's new man, his little club is growing particularly extreme in the games and rules it invents, and it isn’t long before the lines in each of Noburu's worlds blur. 

   Somewhere between The Goonies and Eyes Wide Shut, this is perhaps the most accessible and well know novel from Japan’s most famous (and infamous) author, Yukio Mishima (in 1970 Mishima committed harakiri after a failed, self-launched coup d’état). 

Several scenes stay with you after you’ve finished. Lot’s of big, complicated themes for so skinny a book. 

192 pages

Mishima, Y. (1999). Yukio Mishima, translated by John Nathan.. Sydney: Vintage.

'Double Indemnity' by James M. Cain

Walter was just your normal, average insurance salesman, trying to field a bunch of admittedly suspicious questions from Phyllis the desperate housewife, when one thing led to another. Now he’s an accomplice in her husband’s murder and he’s on the run. Quite possibly the quintessential piece of American noir, Double Indemnity is full of fast-talking and tense, cringeworthy action. The manual for all perfect-crimes-gone-wrong.

115 Pages

Cain, J. (1992). Double indemnity. New York: Vintage Books.