The best novels of spiritual freedom

The searing soul of his characters is explored, from a talking black cat to witches, demons, and Pontius Pilate's dog. The blasted heath of the human mind is laid bare, and the reader transported to ancient, familiar realms. 

I am haunted by Bulgakov's tale and by himself, by all the spirits, demons, ghosts, and apparitions he somehow conjured here, and which have never ceased to live in my imagination since. I had never heard of the book, saw its dark spine on a bookshop shelf 20 years ago, and was lured over to it, drawn to the thick, heavy-inked pages. I did not expect all the universe to be depicted there, in a frenzied, swirling maelstrom that would never surrender me since. 

Hamsun's account of a man’s refusal to die of starvation in 1880s Kristiania. His protagonist yearns for life and love as he pursues the impulses of his subconscious, even though they seem to only lead to his further degradation and destruction. Is there a deeper purpose to this apparent madness? Perceptions, sensations, and fears, all assail the young man's soul, even as he tries to write another article for the local newspaper editor or attempts to hide the fact his trousers are falling apart. The sight on the street of the woman he calls Ylayali, and the yearning aroused, keeps him alive a little longer, as reality becomes a stranger and the normal world of humanity left behind. 

This is one of only two novels I have ever read three times, taking a 10-year break between those reads to process and absorb. 

State-enforced electric shock treatment to the brain has split the personality of the narrator into the dual-identity of Phaedrus the wolf, and the conforming alter-ego man. Based on the reality of Pirsig's own ascent/descent into either the heights of Satori freedom, or the depths of disjointed madness, depending on one's point of view, this detective story of the mind became a 1974 bestseller. Spiritual freedom, represented here, is attained by evading the splits and schisms, daring the 'modern heresy of insanity,' and merging in whichever moments one can with the All-Unifying One on the healing mountain heights usually too high to ever see. 

This is one of only two novels I have ever read three times, taking a 10-year break between those reads to process and absorb. 

A future run by robots, with one robot above all others, and his only desire to be able to die, which he cannot achieve alone. All books forgotten, humans with no memory of how to read, until one lonely man teaches himself by watching old, silent, subtitled films from centuries earlier. He meets his rebellious female counterpart, and the idea of a future free of the state drugs, public human immolations, and mind-numbing rule by dumb robot, begins to take form. Is there time left to revive a barren, childless, thoughtless, hopeless world, and bring to life again the oldest of dreams? In any case, 'Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods.' 

I fear the future described in this masterpiece ever growing near, but the escape hatch from such horrors may lie here also in Tevis' pages. 

Impossible to fathom how Carson McCullers could have distilled such wisdom into her soul by age twenty-three, and then produced this book. The passions and losses, violence and ambition, guilts and loves, of her cast of small-town 1930s Americana characters, wander across the pages like spectres disrupted by a shifting wind. 

The lost, struggling to hear each other's songs above their own pain, but continuing to try through the long night, no matter the chance of success. 

I first bought a copy of this in Sandusky, Ohio, in 1993, on a day off from working at Cedar Point Amusement Park, entranced as I read the first pages standing up in a mall bookshop, the after-echoes of rumbling roller-coasters pummelling my ears and spirit.