Benjamin Buchholz is a U.S. military diplomat who has served around the world in some of the toughest places: Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Uzbekistan, Lebanon, Oman. His interest in the unreliable narrator comes from two sources, like LeCarre, his love for a good spy novel where the characters, protagonist and antagonist alike, often have reasons inside of reasons to obscure their true intentions; and, the deeper psychological portrait of humans who are forced to the brink in order to survive – what does madness do, not just in terms of fracturing an identity, but also, perhaps, in allowing us to persevere through the worst of the worst. Ben's own writing explores these areas, as does the list he recommends here.
Let me tell you, this is the mother of all unreliable narrators. We probably all know the moment when it happens, when we realize that Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, errr, Tyler Durden, can no longer be considered reliable in their telling of the tale. But how much better to read the words Palahniuk wrote, find in them the genesis of the movie, than to just get them fed to you while you're tied to an office chair with a gun in your mouth? Read it. You'll feel dirty and smart all at once.
Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.
If you're okay calling a book that begins with a slain poodle a more gentle read, then this is more gentle. Still, it remains well within the realm of the unpredictable. I love how it works from within to immerse us, as readers, in autism, allowing us to see/feel/hear/be with it awhile. And I love how it shows us magic intrigues happening even in a smaller life.
'Mark Haddon's portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement... Wise and bleakly funny' Ian McEwan
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
This one is fun because, first of all, it's a harrowing story of prison life and escape adventures in the French Caribbean. Not hooked yet? Well, the unreliableness of it isn't necessarily in the book, but in the question of whether the book – as Charriere always maintained – was truthfully autobiographical, or whether he just wove one hell of a tale. Did he really hide his money there? One could throw in Shantaramas another, similar, title to read in this exact genre too.
An immediate sensation upon its publication in 1969, Papillon is a vivid memoir of brutal penal colonies, daring prison breaks and heroic adventure on shark-infested seas.
Condemned for a murder he did not commit, Henri Charriere, nicknamed Papillon, was sent to the penal colony of French Guiana. Forty-two days after his arrival he made his first break for freedom, travelling a thousand gruelling miles in an open boat. He was recaptured and put into solitary confinement but his spirit remained untamed: over thirteen years he made nine incredible escapes, including from the notorious penal colony on Devil's Island.
Well, in my opinion, pick any LeCarre spy novel and you're already winning at life. The slowness with which they sometimes seem to move becomes like a morphine dripline direct into your veins, and by the time you realize exactly what sort of gray-on-gray world the characters inhabit, and what qualities at first ambiguous but later crucial allow them to act with ambiguous heroism, you'll get a true flavor of MI6.
In The Night Manager, an ex-soldier helps British Intelligence penetrate the secret world of ruthless arms dealers.
At the start of it all, Jonathan Pine is merely the night manager at a luxury hotel. But when a single attempt to pass on information to the British authorities - about an international businessman at the hotel with suspicious dealings - backfires terribly, and people close to Pine begin to die, he commits himself to a battle against powerful forces he cannot begin to imagine.
In a chilling tale of corrupt intelligence agencies, billion-dollar price tags and the truth of the brutal…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
He makes up his own language. He lives his violent fantasies. Its final chapter wasn't originally published in America, due to America's ambivalent understanding of its own morals and tolerances. Striving, beauty, confusion, the teen experience, and all of it dystopian and seen through the looking glass of the narrator's flaws. This, friends, is horrible and beautiful all at once.
In Anthony Burgess's influential nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, a teen who talks in a fantastically inventive slang that evocatively renders his and his friends' intense reaction against their society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess's introduction, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."
After 13 years in America, Abu Saheeh has returned to his native Iraq, a nation transformed by American military presence. Alone in a new city, he has exactly what he wants: freedom from his past. Then he meets Layla, a whimsical fourteen-year-old girl who enchants him with her love of American pop culture. Enchanted by Layla's stories and her company, Abu Saheeh settles into the city's rhythm and begins rebuilding his life. But two sudden developments – his alliance with a powerful merchant and his employment of a hot-headed young assistant – reawaken painful memories.
A breathtaking tale of friendship, love, and betrayal, One Hundred and One Nights is an unforgettable novel about the struggle for salvation and the power of family.
Selected by Deesha Philyaw as winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, Lake Song is set in the fictional town of Kinder Falls in New York’s Finger Lakes region. This novel in stories spans decades to plumb the complexities, violence, and compassion of small-town life as the…
Palmer Lind, recovering from the sudden death of her husband, embarks on a bird-watching trek to the Gulf Coast of Florida. One hot day on Leffis Key, she comes upon—not the life bird she was hoping for—but a floating corpse. The handsome beach bum who appears on the scene at…
