1. Introduction to the content of "Homer's Epic"
Homer's epic (including "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey") is a glorious representative of ancient Greek literature, with rich and colorful content , can be called the "encyclopedia" of human childhood society. "The Iliad" is a great work describing ancient wars. It narrates a war between the ancient Greeks and the Trojans, and praises the heroes who fought against the aliens. The Odyssey tells the story of the Greek hero Odysseus who returned home ten years after the Trojan War.
Homer's epic is a model of European narrative poetry. It is considered the greatest ancient epic and has an irreplaceable position in the history of world literature. Marx called it "eternal charm" and "a kind of Norms and unattainable examples”.
Homer’s epic has a profound influence on later generations of literature. Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy and other world-renowned writers all highly admire Homer’s epic and have derived rich literary nutrients from it.
About the author
(Ancient Greece) Homer, according to legend, lived from the 8th century BC to the early 7th century BC, and was born in Asia Minor (one says Ionia, another says is Aeolis). Homer was a blind poet in ancient Greece. At a time when oral literature was popular, he recited and told stories passed down from generation to generation by heart. The two epic poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey" he left behind represent the most glorious achievements of ancient Greek literature. They are praised by future generations as "the greatest ancient epic" and have an irreplaceable position in the history of world literature. and had a profound impact on later generations.
2. "Don Quixote"
As soon as "Don Quixote" came out, it was immediately welcomed by people. In the past hundred years, this work has been popular all over the world. *Translated and published more than a thousand times, it has become one of the world's literary masterpieces that readers generally love to read. Like other literary masters, Cervantes had an accurate grasp of the pulse of his time, but unlike them, Cervantes' language and the world he depicts in his books can speak to modern times without much explanation. readers understand.
Introduction
This book is the representative work of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), an important writer in the Spanish Renaissance. It has been published for more than 400 years since its publication in 1605. It has been translated into more than 50 languages ??and published in more than 2,000 editions. It was ranked first among the 100 greatest literary works in the world by 100 world-famous writers.
The novel describes a poor country squire who became fascinated by the legend of chivalry and determined to resurrect the knight-errant system in the medieval era. He changed his name to Don Quixote, put on ancient armor, rode a thin horse, took the farmer Sancho as his attendant, and went out as a knight-errant. Along the way, he mistook the windmill for a giant and the sheep for an army. He suffered a lot and made a lot of jokes. In the end, he returned without success and woke up before his death. The novel profoundly reflects the ideals of humanism during the Renaissance, and the protagonist has become an immortal model in the history of world literature and social thought. For centuries, millions of readers have continuously absorbed ideological, creative and aesthetic pleasure from it.
. "The Ordinary World" Author: Lu Yao
This is a novel that panoramically expresses the social life of contemporary China in urban and rural areas. There are three parts in the book. The author depicts the images of many ordinary people from all walks of life through complex conflicts and entanglements in the broad background of the past ten years. Labor and love, frustration and pursuit, pain and joy, daily life and huge social conflicts are all intricately intertwined, profoundly showing the difficult and tortuous paths that ordinary people have traveled in the historical process of the great era. In addition to people from Henan, Tongcheng is also an important part of the villagers from poor counties in the northern Loess Plateau and southern plains. Since the coal industry began, this place has become the Alaska of western China, attracting countless people looking for a way out of life. In this "United Nations" with various accents, since Henan has the largest number of people, Henan dialect is generally used for public communication. People from all over the world living in Tongcheng can speak a few words of Henan accent and hum a few words of Henan Opera. The city is surrounded by mountains and hills. The mountains are rocky and the soil is thin, making them unsuitable for farming. The agricultural population is far less dense than the hinterland of the Loess Plateau, let alone the overcrowded central plains. Because there are very few farmers, and there is no shortage of fuel here, these rugged mountains are actually covered with dense firewood and even some treetop forests, making them more picturesque than other places on the Loess Plateau. Whenever autumn comes, the red leaves on some mountains are like fire, and the flowers are as eye-catching as the clusters of flowers... In the mountains and hills, holes are formed due to excessive excavation deep in the ground. The surface of the earth sometimes sinks, and shocking large cracks often tear several trees apart. Mount ridges were erected, and even large roof collapses caused the entire mountain to collapse, causing surrounding earthquakes of around magnitude 3 on the Richter scale. One or two hundred miles north of the mountain is the Yellow River, which flows heavily to the east with thousands of tons of silt... The city can only have one main street in this narrow ravine. The shops and buildings are lined up in rows and layers along this winding street, along both sides of the railway, and along the Qishui River, which usually has a small flow, and are as dense as a hive and an ant nest. It is laid out from south to north for ten miles. The train station is located in the center of the city. A rectangular waiting room painted yellow looks majestic in this gray and black city.
Except for the dual-use airport in the southern suburbs, the small square of the train station may be the most open place in the city. The train goes south from here, crossing the green central plains, and can reach the provincial capital in five or six hours. There are roads extending to the west, east, and north, leading to several neighboring provinces. This railway station runs two express and slow passenger trains from the provincial capital every morning and afternoon, and the rest are all coal trucks. The last track of this branch line branching off from the Longhai Railway does not end at this station. The steel staircase forked into two branches here, climbing uphill and drilling holes along the way, connecting more than 20 mining areas on the east and west sides. When outsiders mention Tongcheng, they all know that this is a place where coal is produced, so they imagine that this city is probably filled with coal everywhere. In fact, there are only one or two coal mines with very small output near Tongcheng, and the rest of the large mines are in the ravines on the east and west sides. When you turn into these valleys along the railway branch, you will know how huge the world is there. These coal mines are only about ten miles apart. Each mining area has tens of thousands of workers, and together with their families, they are almost larger than a mountainous county. The dense population, dense houses, towering derricks, rumbling machines, and noisy sounds make it unbelievable how can these small ravines and bays carry such a huge load?
2. "Muslim Funeral" Author: Hoda
The rise and fall of a Muslim family in sixty years, the ups and downs of the fate of three generations, two stories that happened in different eras and have the same A love tragedy with different contents but intertwined twists. It reveals their unique psychological structure in the collision and integration of Chinese culture and Islamic culture, as well as their confusion and pursuit of the true meaning of life in the political and religious atmosphere. It shows the ancient national customs and the contradictory reality. The work is fresh, smooth, unpretentious, and uses delicate brushwork to probe people's soul. After reading it, it will stir your soul and leave you with deep thoughts.
3. "Norwegian Wood" Author: Haruki Murakami
A love novel that is 100% popular throughout Asia and once ranked as a "super bestseller" in the history of Japanese literature.
Of course this must be regarded as Haruki Murakami's masterpiece. Many people know this Japanese from this book. The whole book uses memories as clues to express the loneliness and confusion of teenagers facing adolescence and the helplessness and boredom of growing up. Through the pain of survival that young people cannot escape under social pressure, Murakami clearly emphasized for the first time the themes he would repeatedly emphasize in subsequent books: the sadness and powerlessness of life.
This is a sad, painful, 100% love novel. The protagonist of the novel, Watanabe, begins his love entanglement with two girls. Watanabe's first love, Naoko, was originally the girlfriend of his high school classmate Kizuki, who later committed suicide. A year later, Watanabe and Naoko met by chance and started dating. At this time, Naoko had become quiet and shy, with an elusive shadow flashing through her beautiful crystal eyes from time to time. The two of them just walked aimlessly in front of, behind or side by side in the fallen leaves of Tokyo streets day after day. The two had sex on the night of Naoko's 20th birthday. Unexpectedly, Naoko disappeared the next day. A few months later, Naoko wrote to say that she was admitted to a mental sanatorium far away in the mountains. When Watanabe went to visit, he found that Naoko began to have the plumpness and beauty of a mature woman. Although the two were in the same room at night, Watanabe restrained himself and said before breaking up that he would always wait for Naoko. Not long after returning to school, due to a chance encounter, Watanabe began to date Midori, who was in the lower grade. Midori is the complete opposite of the introverted Naoko, "just like a deer jumping into the world in the spring morning light." During this period, Watanabe felt very depressed and hesitant. On the one hand, I can't forget Naoko's lingering illness and tenderness, on the other hand, I can't resist Midoriko's bold confession and charming vitality. Soon the bad news came that Naoko had committed suicide, and Watanabe walked around in despair. Finally, with the encouragement of Naoko's roommate Reiko, she began to explore her future life.
I personally think that the content is complicated and difficult to understand if you don’t read it carefully
4. "The Count of Monte Cristo" Author: Alexandre Dumas
"Monte Cristo" "The Count" is the masterpiece of the famous French writer Alexandre Dumas. Dantès, the first mate of the Pharaon, was entrusted by the captain to deliver a letter to the Napoleonic party. He was framed by two despicable villains and a judge, and was thrown into death row. The inmate Father Faria taught him all kinds of knowledge, and before his death, he told him the secret of a group of treasures buried on the island of Monte Cristo. Dantès found the treasure after escaping from prison and became extremely rich. From then on, he changed his name to Count of Monte Cristo, and after careful planning, he repaid his benefactors and punished his enemies. This book is full of romantic legend, and the chapters are unique, novel and fascinating.
The story is very strong and very readable!
5. "The Godfather" Author: Mario Puzo
This was published in the United States in 1969 The novel is the number one best-seller in the history of American publishing. It has been on the best-seller list for 70 consecutive weeks and has sold 20 million copies in 37 years. As early as the early 1970s, it was made into a movie and distributed all over the world. It was widely welcomed. Two of the three movies adapted from the novel won Oscars. The story of "The Godfather" provides a kind of terrible pleasure that is deeply rooted in the American heart, allowing readers to observe a shocking, dark and violent illegal class up close, and presenting readers with a feast of dangerous lifestyles.
A classic gangster story~!
6 "Sophie's World" Author: Jostan Judd
A world-famous and best-selling philosophical book
The world's easiest to read A philosophy book
A novel about the history of philosophy
One of the 100 classic works of the 20th century
In 1994, it won the "German Youth Literature Award" and " "Best Work Award"
"Sophie's World" uses the form of a novel to reveal the development process of Western philosophy through the process of a philosophy tutor imparting philosophical knowledge to a girl named Sophie. From the Pre-Socratic era to Sartre, as well as the thoughts of Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel and others, the author's vivid writing style is vividly displayed on the page, and is explained with the historical background of the time, which is fascinating. Critics believe that this book is the most suitable introductory book for those who have never taken a philosophy course, and it can also serve as a refresher for those who have read some philosophy in the past but have forgotten all about it. .
7. "The Catcher in the Rye" Author: Salinger
"The Catcher in the Rye" is Salinger's only full-length novel, although it is only a few hundred thousand word, it has had a huge impact on American society and literary circles. When this novel came out in 1951, it immediately caused a sensation. The protagonist's experiences and thoughts have aroused strong excitement among teenagers and are warmly welcomed by readers, especially college and middle school students. They all imitated the protagonist Holden's costumes and spoke "Holden-like" language, because the novel spoke their hearts and reflected their ideals, anguish and wishes. After more than 30 years of time test, it has been proved that it is worthy of being one of the "modern classic novels" in contemporary American literature. Now most middle schools and colleges have listed it as required extracurricular reading. As some critics said, it has "almost greatly influenced several generations of American youth."
8. "The Fifteenth Year of Wanli" Author: Huang Renyu
The fifteenth year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, that is, 1587 AD, was originally an extremely ordinary year in Chinese history. Focusing on the historical events around that time and the people who lived in that era, the author sorted out various problems existing in the management of traditional Chinese society, and on this basis, explored the experiences and lessons that modern China should learn from. The author is world-famous for his "big history" view, and this concept has just emerged in this book. "The narrative may be detailed, but the conclusion must look far rather than near." Since its publication in mainland China in the early 1980s, this book has received rave reviews and has had a wide impact in academic and cultural circles. ...
"Fifteen Years of Wanli" was written by Mr. Huang Renyu in the United States in 1976. It has not attracted public attention in China until recent years. In fact, there were no earth-shattering events in the Ming Dynasty during this year, so they were not noticed by ordinary researchers. However, many trivial events that occurred during this year, like the end of Qingping, became a precursor to the collapse of the empire.
It has been five years since the death of Yuanfu Zhang Juzheng, Hai Rui also passed away in this year, and the famous general Qi Jiguang also died at the end of the year. Nurhaci, then 29 years old, rose to prominence in the Northeast: he built palaces and preached religion. Orders were placed in the ministry to prohibit riots, suppress theft, and legislate... However, the court paid no attention; the Spanish Armada was about to set off for England, opening a new page in world history...
9. "The Course of Beauty" Author: Li Zehou
"The Course of Beauty" provides a general description and aesthetic grasp of China's thousands of years of art and literature from a macro bird's-eye view. Among them, the "dragon and phoenix dance" of primitive ancient art, the "ferocious beauty" of Yin and Zhou bronze art, the "complementarity of Confucianism and Taoism" of pre-Qin rationality, the "romanticism" of Chu Ci, Han Fu and Han portrait stone, the "human The "awakening" style of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Buddhist sculptures of the Six Dynasties, Tang and Song Dynasties, the landscape paintings of the Song Dynasty, and the three categories of poetry, lyrics, and music with their own aesthetics, the novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the changes in dramas from romance to sentimentality to reality, etc. are important There are many concepts that have not been published before. This book was first published in 1981 and has been reprinted many times with hundreds of thousands of copies. There are many translations in English, German, Japanese, Korean and so on. This article is really good.
10. "Fortress Besieged" Author: Qian Zhongshu
"Fortress Besieged" is a satirical novel with a unique style in the history of mid-modern literature. The author, Qian Zhongshu, was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province in 1910. He graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages ??and Literatures of Tsinghua University in 1933 and later studied in England and France. He is a talented scholar who has learned both Chinese and Western knowledge. "The Besieged City" was started in 1944 and completed in 1946. At that time, the author was living in hibernation in Shanghai, hearing about the tyranny of the Japanese invaders and "worrying about the world for two years." Accumulatedly, he put his insights and thoughts on life and academics into writing, and successively completed the novel "Fortress Besieged" and the academic book "Talk about Art".
With this only novel, Qian Zhongshu became a master of novels in modern Chinese literature. Since this book was published in the late 1940s, how many people have cried for it, laughed for it, sighed deeply for it, and thought about it for a long time. Life is a siege, and marriage is a siege. If you rush in, you will be surrounded by all the worries of life. Qian Zhongshu used his free and humorous writing style to describe the happiness and sorrow of a group of intellectuals. Qian Zhongshu's profound insights and transcendent wisdom on survival are enough for readers to comment again and again. .
11. "Alive" Author: Yu Hua
The title of this work is "Alive". As a word, "Alive" is full of power in our country's language. Strength does not come from shouting or attacking, but from enduring, enduring the responsibilities that life gives us, and enduring the happiness and suffering, boredom and mediocrity that reality gives us. As part of the work, "To Live" tells the story of the friendship between a person and his destiny. This is the most touching friendship, because they are grateful to each other and hate each other at the same time; neither of them can abandon the other, and at the same time, no one has any reason to complain. other side. They walked together on the dusty road when they were alive, and when they died they turned into rain and mud together. At the same time, "Alive" also tells how people endure great suffering, just like the old saying: a critical moment. A hair was allowed to bear the weight of 30,000 kilograms, and it did not break. "Alive" also tells about the breadth and richness of tears; about the non-existence of despair; about people living for the sake of living itself, not for anything other than living.
12. "The Story of Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" Author: Yu Hua
"The Story of Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" is a novel written by Yu Hua in 1995. The novel depicts life in hardships with tenderness and expresses people's desire to survive in the face of misfortune in the form of a fierce story. The novel tells the story of Xu Sanguan who relied on selling blood to overcome the difficulties in life and defeated the fate imposed on him. However, when he got old and knew that no one wanted his blood, his spirit collapsed. When reviewing "Xu Sanguan's Story of Selling Blood", the French "Reading" magazine said: This is an exquisite novel. The novel is a perfect combination of simplicity and conciseness with profound connotations. Yu Hua is currently writing a novel, which tells a love story with a long time span. In terms of literary style, this will be a novel similar to "Xu Sanguan" A very different work from "Selling Blood", this novel will be completed early next year. This book expresses the author's fascination with length, a road, a river, a rainbow after the rain, an endless memory, a song A folk song with a beginning and an end, a person's life. All of this is like a coiled rope, slowly being pulled out by the narrative to the end of the road. Here, the author sometimes has nothing to do, because he discovered fiction from the beginning The characters also have their own voices, and he believes that these voices should be respected and allowed to find answers in the wind. As a result, the author is no longer a narrative aggressor, but a listener, a patient, careful , an understanding and empathetic listener. He tried to do this. When narrating, he tried to cancel his identity as an author. He felt that he should be a reader. This was also the case. After the book was completed, he I find that I don’t know more than others. The characters in the book often speak by themselves, which sometimes scares the author. When those appropriate and wonderful words blurt out from the fictional mouth, the author will suddenly feel inferior and feel secretly in his heart. Thinking: "I can't say such a thing." However, when he became a real reader, when he read other people's works, he often secretly said with pride: "I also said such a thing." This seems to be literature. We need its influence to correct our thoughts and attitudes. What is interesting is that when many great works influence an author, he will find that his fictional characters are also influencing him in the same way. This book is actually a very long folk song. Its rhythm is the speed of memory, the melody jumps gently, and the rests are hidden by rhymes. The author here only fictionalizes the history of two people, and what he is trying to evoke is a much deeper story. The memories of many people. Martial said: "Recalling the past life is tantamount to living again." Writing and reading are actually knocking on the door of memories, or in other words, they are all for the purpose of living again.
13. "Gadfly" Author: Voynich
Gadfly: Dying for your beliefs is like taking a walk
He, the Gadfly - a man who is willing to be killed for his revolutionary beliefs People who are tortured by fate. He loved two people deeply - his father Montanlini and the noble woman Gemma, but later in his life he never gave them a chance to love him again. His book is not only a generous and moving revolutionary book, but also an elegant and pure literary masterpiece. This book is full of artistic appeal that profoundly describes human nature. In China, the most populous country, and the former Soviet Union, the country with the widest land, "Gadfly" has countless admirers for generations. The protagonist, Gadfly, is a rebel from the upper class. When I was young, I experienced several unforgettable emotional sufferings. He has made big mistakes out of ignorance. The girl he loves the most has caused him terrible spiritual harm; his biological father, whom he respects, is a ferocious political enemy! However, he pursued the truth without hesitation, abandoning love and life - for the independence and freedom of Italy. The gadfly has become the embodiment of "strongness" in the hearts of young people! The novel revolves around the gadfly, his lover Gemma and the complex character Bishop Montanelli. The lines are concise but the writing is ups and downs and thrilling, showing the author's passionate emotional world and strong artistic skills.
14. "Wuthering Heights" Author: Emily Bronte
"Wuthering Heights" is a shocking "strange novel" written by the British female writer Emily Bronte. Millie Bronte's only masterpiece in her life. The abandoned child Heathcliff was adopted by Earnshaw, the owner of "Wuthering Heights". Earnshaw's daughter Catherine had been friends with him since childhood and developed a passionate love.
However, the owner's son Hindley hated him. After the death of old Earn Xiao, he reduced him to a slave and humiliated him in every possible way. Catherine married Linton in order to obtain the property of Linton, the owner of "Thrushcross Grange" to support Heathcliff. When Heathcliff learned about it, he ran away angrily. A few years later, Heathcliff returned rich, leaving Hindley bankrupt. He tricked Linton's sister into marrying him and abused her at will. Catherine finally died of illness because she could not marry Heathcliff.
15. "The Dust Has Settled" Author: Alai
"The Dust Has Settled" is a novel by the young Tibetan writer Alai. The novel won the fifth Mao Dun Literature Award. In the Aba area of ??Sichuan in the 1940s, the local Tibetan people were ruled by eighteen families of Tu people, and Maiqi Chieftain was one of them.
"The Dust Has Settled" tells the story of the Kham Tibetans, which is of course a very national theme. Because of the writer's ethnicity and his life experience, the choice of this seemingly unique theme is actually inevitable. However, the novel is not limited to national themes. The novel involves power, heroes, religion, credit, vendetta, Topics such as love have modern relevance. This makes "The Dust Has Settled" not only unique in subject matter, but also of universal significance. "The Dust Has Settled" is about history, but history is also a reality, and if this reality is more fully expressed, its appearance will be broader and more profound. The same kind of space means that it is possible to interpret multiple stories. Regarding this period of history, Alai said, "History is about writing a state of it, or my understanding of a certain aspect of it."
16. "The Complete Biography of Napoleon" Author: Liu Promised Land
In 1804, in a grand ceremony, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor of France. His French has a strong Corsican accent, and he seems unfit to be the leader of France. But he almost conquered the whole world. He was a military genius who traveled across the entire European continent and Egypt... In 1815, the British and Prussian forces defeated him completely in the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was exiled to a British island in the South Atlantic and died six years later. Napoleon was also a man who loved both country and beauty. He had countless love affairs and debts in his life... His tricks to win the hearts of beautiful women were as outstanding as his military genius... This book is by far the most comprehensive, fair, vivid and detailed presentation of Napoleon's military career and emotional world. Works!
17. "Broken April" Author: Kadale
Qiaogo's brother was killed by his enemies. From that moment on, Qiaogo's life was far away from him. And go. According to the Kanu Code, which rules the northern Albanian highlands, if a man is killed, his family must avenge him. Qiaogo could not escape his fate. On March 17, he successfully shot the murderer. Before being hunted by the family of the deceased, he was allowed a thirty-day truce, and his April was broken into two parts: before April 17, it was "white" and safe; "Black" and "white" are desperate.
Intertwined with Qiaogo's fate is a newlywed couple. They come from cities and are full of yearning for plateau culture. The bride Deanna falls in love at first sight with Qiaogo, who is threatened by death. At the same time, Qiaogo also wants to meet Deanna again before April turns black.
As soon as a person is born into this world, he is caught in the fate of hunting or killing, and his life can only be as short and bright as the broken April. "Broken April" tells the story of a person for one month in a concise and poetic style, but it reflects the obsession and tragedy of a nation for hundreds of years.