Reading path
The Centre Cannot Hold
The literature of things falling apart. Yeats wrote the line in 1920 with Europe still smoking from one war, and writers have been working in its shadow ever since. Two of them took their book titles straight from his poem; the rest gather around them, each holding the eye steady at a different place where the world is breaking. The mood is dread that knows itself. The work is to look anyway.
In the app a path keeps your place, marks what you have read, and hands you the next work when you are ready for it.
The first button needs the app on this device; the second gets it there.
The route
- 1. King LearWilliam Shakespeare, 1606
- 2. Old MortalitySir Walter Scott, 1816
- 3. Heart of DarknessJoseph Conrad, 1899
- 4. Under Western EyesJoseph Conrad, 1911
- 5. The Second ComingW.B. Yeats, 1920
- 6. The Waste LandT.S. Eliot, 1922
- 7. The TrialFranz Kafka, 1925
- 8. The PlagueAlbert Camus, 1947
- 9. If This Is a ManPrimo Levi, 1947
- 10. Notes of a Native SonJames Baldwin, 1955
- 11. Things Fall ApartChinua Achebe, 1958
- 12. Eichmann in JerusalemHannah Arendt, 1963
- 13. Notes on "Camp"Susan Sontag, 1964
- 14. One Hundred Years of SolitudeGabriel García Márquez, 1967
- 15. Slouching Towards BethlehemJoan Didion, 1968
- 16. SatantangoLászló Krasznahorkai, 1985
- 17. The Rings of SaturnW.G. Sebald, 1995
- 18. 2666Roberto Bolaño, 2004
- 19. A Fine BalanceRohinton Mistry, 1995
- 20. Homage to CataloniaGeorge Orwell, 1938
- 21. DemonsFyodor Dostoevsky, 1872
- 22. Waiting for the BarbariansJ.M. Coetzee, 1980
- 23. The Confusions of Young TörlessRobert Musil, 1906
- 24. The Education of Henry AdamsHenry Adams, 1907
- 25. The Secret AgentJoseph Conrad, 1907
- 26. Zayni BarakatJamal al-Ghitani, 1974
- 27. The Labyrinth of SolitudeOctavio Paz, 1950
- 28. They Were CountedMiklos Banffy, 1934
- 29. Black Lamb and Grey FalconRebecca West, 1941
- 30. The Gate of Heavenly PeaceJonathan Spence, 1981
- 31. The Strange Death of Liberal EnglandGeorge Dangerfield, 1935
- 32. Ninety-ThreeVictor Hugo, 1874
- 33. Idylls of the KingAlfred, Lord Tennyson, 1859
- 34. The White GuardMikhail Bulgakov, 1925
- 35. Fieldwork In Ukrainian SexOksana Zabuzhko, 1996
- 36. Conversation in the CathedralMario Vargas Llosa, 1969