Others: Mixed Catch-22 is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original. Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him. Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane. It is a novel that lives and moves and grows with astonishing power and vitality -- a masterpiece of our time. - Back cover.
Genres: historical fiction
Lists: …
Hilary Mantel
1992 · 872 pages · 1 review
Others: MixedA spellbinding, epic novel which recounts the events between the fall of the Ancient Regime and the peak of the Terror, as seen through the eyes of the French Revolution's three protagonists – Georges-Jacques Danton, Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, men whose mix of ambition, idealism, and ego helped unleash the darker side of the Revolution's ideals and brought them eventually to their own tragic ends. Critically acclaimed upon first publication, 'A Place of Greater Safety' is one of Mantel's most celebrated works of fiction.
What made the match, strongest first
Umberto Eco
1994 · 522 pages · 1 review
Others: MixedEn el verano de 1643 y en los mares del Sur, un joven piamontés, Roberto de la Grive, arriba como náufrago a una nave desierta. La nave está llena de animales desconocidos y de extrañas máquinas y artilugios, y ante ella, próxima e inalcanzable (no sólo, descubriremos después, en el espacio, sino también en el tiempo) una isla de ensueño. Roberto escribe cartas a la 'Señora'; a través de las cuales se adivina poco a poco su pasado: duelos, asedios, lances amorosos, alambicadas disputas de salón. Se trata, de hecho, de la lenta y traumática iniciación al mundo de la nueva ciencia, las razones de estado, las redes de espionaje de Mazarino y Richelieu, la guerra de los treinta años, en suma, a un cosmos en el que la tierra ha dejado de ser para muchos el centro del universo. En este 'Mar de la Inocencia' nada es inocente, y Roberto lo sabe desde el principio, porque ha llegado a estas Antípodas para resolver -sin personalmente desearlo- el misterio por el cual forcejean las nuevas potencias de la época: el secreto del Punto Fijo.
What made the match, strongest first
Jake Arnott
2012 · 416 pages · 4 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveLarry Zagorski, a science fiction writer turned U.S. fighter pilot, searches for connections between what seem like disparate events while conspiracy theories begin to suggest the possibility of a single force behind them in this novel that mixes real-life figures with fictional characters as it moves briskly from WW II spy intrigue (featuring Ian Fleming) and occultism to the West Coast pulp science-fiction set and the 1980s U.K. new wave music scene.
What made the match, strongest first
Elif Shafak
2013 · 342 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveThe lives of twin sisters born in 1940s Turkey diverge when one stays in their childhood village and becomes a revered midwife while the other moves to London with her bitter husband and three children.
What made the match, strongest first
David Benioff
2008 · 272 pages · 4 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveFrom the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival — and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime. During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible. By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.
What made the match, strongest first
Kate Atkinson
2015 · 468 pages · 2 reviews
Others: PositiveUrsula Todd's brother Teddy is an old man trying to come to grips with his post-War life and with a modern world and family. Switching back and forth in time between memories of his childhood and his present, Teddy is an oblivious husband, a rueful father. He never quite got over the War and part of him never adjusted to having a future. Would-be poet, heroic pilot, husband, father, and grandfather, Teddy navigates the perils and progress of a rapidly changing world; his greatest challenge is living in a future he never expected to have. --
What made the match, strongest first
MixedI found it a rather difficult book very hard to get into it for the first 50 100 pages also because that humor I mentioned I'm not too sure how well it has aged this is a novel that actually deals with some of the bleakest moments in recent history and some of the greatest contradictions of human life in honest terms
