Pantheon modern writers

"The principal action in A Painter of Our Time takes place across a stretch of some four years in the life of the fictional Hungarian painter Janos Lavin. The story is told in part by Lavin’s friend John, who resembles John Berger in several ways--not least in his being an art critic during this period--and who has discovered Lavin’s journal in the latter’s studio after his return to Budapest in October, 1956. The text alternates between passages from the journal and the interpolations of John, who fills in the gaps, narrating more fully the events surrounding the reflections recorded in the journal"--Summary taken from enotes website.

An international bestseller and winner of the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, The Ogre is a masterful tale of innocence, perversion, and obsession. It follows the passage of strange, gentle Abel Tiffauges from submissive schoolboy to "ogre" of the Nazi school at the castle of Kaltenborn, taking us deeper into the dark heart of fascism than any novel since The Tin Drum.

Fake Ploeg, een collaborerende inspecteur van politie, berucht om zijn wreedheid, fietst tijdens spertijd door de buitenwijken van Haarlem naar huis. Door de winterse avond klinken plotseling zes scherpe knallen en Ploeg ligt dood op de stoep voor een rijtje van vier huizen, waarvan er een door de familie Steenwijk wordt bewoond. De verschrikkelijke gevolgen van deze gebeurtenis zullen de dan twaalfjarige Anton Steenwijk zijn leven lang blijven achtervolgen.

Friday, winner of the 1967 Grand Prix du Roman of the Academie Francaise, is a sly, enchanting retelling of the legend of Robinson Crusoe by the man the New Yorker calls "France's best and probably best-known writer." Cast away on a tropical island, Michel Tournier's god-fearing Crusoe sets out to tame it, to remake it in the image of the civilization he has left behind. Alone and against incredible odds, he almost succeeds. Then a mulatto named Friday appears and teaches Robinson that there are, after all, better things in life than civilization.

One of the most influential thinkers of her generationdraws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises in these three “immensely intelligent stories about the decay of passion” (The Sunday Herald Times). Suffused with de Beauvoir’s remarkable insights into women, The Woman Destroyed gives us a legendary writer at her best. Includes "The Age of Discretion," "The Monologue," and "The Woman Destroyed." "Witty, immensely adroit...These three women are believable individuals presented with a wry mixture of sympathy and exasperation." —The Atlantic