When the revolutionary impulse overtakes a society, what is the meaning of that impulse to the individual? Malraux's novel chronicles a failed 1930s Chinese socialist insurrection that presaged the rise of Maoism. The emotional contours Malraux charts read like today's front page.
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I read it in high school and really didn't get it. I went to war, came back, and then I got it. Though often read as a tale of teenage angst, at its emotional core, Catcher is also a war novel. Salinger landed on Utah Beach in the first wave on D-Day. Here's the book's final line: "Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." Salinger didn't tackle the war head-on in his writing; here, Holden Caulfield tells us why.
Near the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, two French lieutenants fight an inconclusive duel — which, it is later revealed, was in part triggered by a misunderstanding. A series of subsequent duels occur over the next two decades. Conrad's allegorical tale, published in 1908, seems newly relevant as we once again enter a period of cyclical violence.
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem merits a revisit, not only for the evident parallels between the 1960s and America's current political turmoil, but also for Didion's unmatched ability to distill the essence of a time, a place, or a movement headed in directions unknown.
This 1942 novel takes place during the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as two old, estranged military school friends reunite for a once customary dinner. The dinner turns into a trial of sorts, as well as an examination of friendship, love, fidelity, and the fallout from the dissolution of old orders.
Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski (Vintage, $15).
A fever dream of a book — probably the best title on this list — about the fall of Iran's last shah. Nobody writes quite like Kapuscinski, whose style reads like an improbable blend of magic realism and journalism.
— Elliot Ackerman, a former Marine platoon commander, is a journalist and the author of the 2015 novelGreen on Blue. InDark at the Crossing, his second novel, an Iraqi-American attempts to join Syrian rebels fighting to topple Bashar al-Assad.
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