Reading path
The Furnace
Literature written inside the fire. War, revolution, genocide, exile: the worst things human beings have done to each other, witnessed and recorded by the people who survived them, or didn't. This is not easy reading. It is necessary reading. What emerges from these pages is not despair but testimony, and an insistence that remembering is itself an act of resistance.
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. The IliadHomer, 750 BCE
- 2. The AeneidVirgil, 19 BCE
- 3. Zapovit (My Testament)Taras Shevchenko, 1845
- 4. War and PeaceLeo Tolstoy, 1869
- 5. All Quiet on the Western FrontErich Maria Remarque, 1929
- 6. The Sun Also RisesErnest Hemingway, 1926
- 7. A Farewell to ArmsErnest Hemingway, 1929
- 8. Darkness at NoonArthur Koestler, 1940
- 9. The Diary of a Young GirlAnne Frank, 1947
- 10. A Song on the End of the WorldCzesław Miłosz, 1944
- 11. Death FuguePaul Celan, 1948
- 12. If This Is a ManPrimo Levi, 1947
- 13. Man's Search for MeaningViktor Frankl, 1946
- 14. Catch-22Joseph Heller, 1961
- 15. Slaughterhouse-FiveKurt Vonnegut, 1969
- 16. The Grapes of WrathJohn Steinbeck, 1939
- 17. Doctor ZhivagoBoris Pasternak, 1957
- 18. RequiemAnna Akhmatova, 1963
- 19. FatelessnessImre Kertész, 1975
- 20. A Tomb for Boris DavidovichDanilo Kiš, 1976
- 21. For Whom the Bell TollsErnest Hemingway, 1940
- 22. KaputtCurzio Malaparte, 1944
- 23. HiroshimaJohn Hersey, 1946
- 24. The Second World WarWinston Churchill, 1948
- 25. Homage to CataloniaGeorge Orwell, 1938
- 26. Life and FateVasily Grossman, 1980
- 27. Family SayingsNatalia Ginzburg, 1963
- 28. The Garden of the Finzi-ContinisGiorgio Bassani, 1962
- 29. HistoryElsa Morante, 1974
- 30. Parade's EndFord Madox Ford, 1924
- 31. Johnny Got His GunDalton Trumbo, 1939
- 32. Human ActsHan Kang, 2014
- 33. Good-Bye to All ThatRobert Graves, 1929
- 34. The Great War and Modern MemoryPaul Fussell, 1975
- 35. The Face of BattleJohn Keegan, 1976
- 36. The GamblerFyodor Dostoevsky, 1866
- 37. La DébâcleÉmile Zola, 1892
- 38. Ninety-ThreeVictor Hugo, 1874
- 39. The Sorrow of BelgiumHugo Claus, 1983
- 40. The CityValerian Pidmohylny, 1928
- 41. The Unknown SoldierVäinö Linna, 1954