Reading path
Written in Prison or Exile
Some of the greatest literature was written behind bars, beyond borders, or under political oppression so severe it amounted to the same thing. Confinement has a way of stripping language down to what matters. These writers had everything taken from them except the ability to think and the need to bear witness. What they produced in those conditions is not diminished by suffering. It is clarified by it. The walls made the vision sharper.
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 Consolation of PhilosophyBoethius, 524 CE
- 2. Letters to LuciliusSeneca, 65 CE
- 3. The PrinceNiccolò Machiavelli, 1532
- 4. Don QuixoteMiguel de Cervantes, 1605
- 5. The Diary of a Young GirlAnne Frank, 1947
- 6. If This Is a ManPrimo Levi, 1947
- 7. Man's Search for MeaningViktor Frankl, 1946
- 8. Darkness at NoonArthur Koestler, 1940
- 9. RequiemAnna Akhmatova, 1963
- 10. Doctor ZhivagoBoris Pasternak, 1957
- 11. The Master & MargaritaMikhail Bulgakov, 1967
- 12. Dead SoulsNikolai Gogol, 1842
- 13. LolitaVladimir Nabokov, 1955
- 14. Speak MemoryVladimir Nabokov, 1951
- 15. 1984George Orwell, 1949
- 16. FatelessnessImre Kertész, 1975
- 17. Death FuguePaul Celan, 1948
- 18. A Song on the End of the WorldCzesław Miłosz, 1944
- 19. A Tomb for Boris DavidovichDanilo Kiš, 1976
- 20. LeviathanThomas Hobbes, 1651
- 21. Doctor FaustusThomas Mann, 1947
- 22. The Origins of TotalitarianismHannah Arendt, 1951
- 23. One Day in the Life of Ivan DenisovichAleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1962
- 24. The House of the SpiritsIsabel Allende, 1982
- 25. FacundoDomingo Faustino Sarmiento, 1845
- 26. The Captive MindCzesław Miłosz, 1953
- 27. Life's Good, BrotherNâzim Hikmet, 1962
- 28. Reading Lolita in TehranAzar Nafisi, 2003
- 29. Before Night FallsReinaldo Arenas, 1992
- 30. By Night in ChileRoberto Bolaño, 2000
- 31. Down Second AvenueEs'kia Mphahlele, 1959
- 32. Long Walk To FreedomNelson Mandela, 1994
- 33. The Notebook, The Proof, The Third LieAgota Kristof, 1986
- 34. The Royal GameStefan Zweig, 1941
- 35. Ship of FoolsCristina Peri Rossi, 1984
- 36. Le Morte d'ArthurThomas Malory, 1485
- 37. ResurrectionLeo Tolstoy, 1899