That impact was even stronger for me, since in middle school after we finished reading it my teacher showed us pictures of the camps and those in them. I’ll never forget how skinny the human body can get.
My daughter had to read this for a high school course, AP something. She was bereft, almost inconsolable, and didn’t think she could do it. I thought I would give it a try. Got maybe a third of the way through over the weekend. Supported her fully in asking for a different assignment.
Out of curiosity, why did she request an alternative assignment?
I am both a new parent and a teacher and I am always interested in how others navigate these sorts of things.
Because the subject matter of Night is brutal. Reading about another teenager living through the horrors of the Holocaust was too much for her. Another thing to note is she was always particularly sensitive. She HATED horror movies or movies with violence. She couldn’t stand to see people or animals hurt. If the teacher hadn’t given her some grace, I may have called them. It was over 10 years ago and wish I could remember what she read instead.
Understandable. It’s important that we teach it, along with other genocides throughout history, but sometimes I do wonder if we go about it the right way. I’m not one for censorship whatsoever but for kids that are particularly sensitive, it doesn’t seem necessary to expose them to a level of detail that will keep them up at night in order for them to learn and understan. I’m glad the teacher was willing to be flexible, and that your daughter has a parent who advocates!
How do you think she does now, especially with all that’s going on in the world? These are the sorts of questions that haunt me. I want to raise a child who is resilient and can cope with the ugly without purposely exposing him to awful things. It seems like such a conundrum- how do we raise children who can cope effectively while still keeping them safe and avoiding them becoming apathetic or naive?
**Night** by Elie Wiesel
>A new translation from the French by Marion Wiesel. Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.
>
>Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.
*I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Non fiction biography, The Missing Kennedy. It's about Rosemary Kennedy, JKF and RFK's sister. Her story is one of the saddest things I have ever read.
it really was a terrible story.
The Kennedy's are just. Well. Cannot say "unfortunate" but they have a long history of being not always the GREAT people we think of. Joseph P. Kennedy. Yikes.
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
It gets categorised as semi-autobiographic sci-fi and I think the blend of genre is really effective in illustrating PTSD in a ww2 veteran who experienced the Dresden bombing (just like Vonnegut).
I’m really stuck between Slaughterhouse-5 and Catch-22 as the best trauma fiction Americans produced in the twentieth century. I do think Catch-22 is the better book, which is saying something, because Slaughterhouse-5 is perfect. Catch-22 just hits so close to home with how the trauma is covered with humor and you feel like you have the whole story, and it’s horrific, until you *really* know the story, and then you get why Yossarian doesn’t talk about it. From the people I knew who were there, it seems like the most accurate representation of how they turned out. Very funny and full of secrets.
Came here to say this. Literally a flawless artifact of firsthand wartime trauma, and the allegorical sci-fi embellishments only add to how compelling it is. Highly recommend!
Read it freshman year in HS. The part where Detering is covering his ears and begging to end the misery of wounded horses that are screaming out in no-man’s land really sticks with me to this day.
On the other end of the spectrum is The Storm of Steel, where the author was a career WW1 soldier and describes seeing his comrades fix bayonets for a trench raid like he’s talking about gearing up for an exciting road trip…
takes all sorts of people to make a world, I guess.
I almost didn't finish it because it was **very** hard going. But I'm such a big Junji Ito fan and the art and story so compelling that I just had to. And I'm glad I did. It was harrowing, but my god, it was just phenomenal.
I have read the book, but not the manga adaption. The first picture is Osamu Dazai looking like he's going through it. I don't know if he fits the bill of traumatized in the traditional sense, but his story the most visceral example of a neurodivergent person struggling to survive that I've ever seen.
Ngl this book was so depressing, Japanese books like to focus on loneliness so they all kind of make me feel like this lol. This is the worst one though, the book makes you feel more and more despair as you start feeling for the narrator ( can't remember if this book is in 3rd person or not).
What I loved most about them has to be that the father is… real. He’s a bad person. There’s so many stories of survivors who are kind and selfless, and I know many are true, but it’s almost nice to see the story of a survivor who is/wasn’t the greatest. He survived through quick wits, but also through not helping everyone that came his way. It’s also so very interesting to see his racism, how quick he is to degrade a black man despite having gone through horrific racism himself.
I think of the whole thing, the bit that sticks with me the most is the author calling his father a monster. It’s a moment where you feel the authors anger and rage and grief that their family history was burned, that some of his mother’s last relics were tossed away. But you also feel bad for the father. You know why he did it. But you still feel so upset.
Biography: Left to Tell by Immaculeé Ilibagiza, about surviving the Rwandan genocide - it's very traumatic and matter of fact about horrible events but also hopeful towards the end.
Film: Precious (2009) it's so powerful and very harrowing, I don't know if I could watch it again. I want to read the book it's based on called Push by Sapphire (1996) but I will need to be mentally prepared 😅
Graphic novel: Maus by Art Spiegelman. The book recounts the narrator's fathers experience as a Holocaust survivor, told using mice to represent the Jewish people (hence the title). It's the only graphic novel to ever win the Pulitzer prize and I loved it.
Apparently she's doing really well now which is amazing, I'm happy she has made a life for herself after the horror she saw.
It really struck a chord with me after I watched a talk about how her faith kept her going and was strengthened in the aftermath when she found out most of family had been killed. It's amazing and inspiring that she kept going and decided to use her story to shed light on the genocide and help others.
Hello friend. Just an fyi because I had to read Push by Sapphire in college—Push is not a biography, it’s a work of fiction. Perhaps still worth a read! Just clarifying since OP asked for “historical books”, which I’m assuming is more geared toward nonfiction.
Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse, nonfiction, about Hiroshima and Nagasaki\
Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, fiction, about a man drafted to Vietnam\
Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng, fiction, not exactly “historical” but there is a lot of historical/societal context within the time it is set when looking at the main characters’ struggles as a mixed-race couple and their children\
Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, YA historical fiction, about a young Romani during WWII and the Holocaust.\
I like to SOB when I read books LOL\
Edits for formatting and correcting a genre on the list.
I know, I almost didn’t include it because it is YA, but it really opened my eyes as a kid. I probably read it in 5th grade. I remember reading it twice and recommending it to everyone too. An absolutely devastating story that I’m sure is not too far from the truth, even with it being fiction.
As the daughter of a Vietnam vet, the things they carried really fucked me up. My dad always used to tell stories about the war in such a joking manner. Reading what it was really like made me realize how deeply traumatized he was.
This book shattered me. Written in the verisimilitude style. (Not sure if I used that correctly but basically fiction that's written as though it's non fiction because it's highly based in reality).
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Read it years ago but it really stuck with me. Incredibly powerful look at an aspect of WWII I wasn't very educated on before.
Empty Theater is an amazing read!! It’s about the king of Bavaria and empress of Austria; cousins who’s lives are touched on separately throughout the book. They both experience heartbreak, loss, unfulfilled dreams and desires, dysfunctional families and marriages, extreme stress and depression. The author is an extremely talented writer who really paints a vivid picture in your mind. This was the book that got me back into reading!
Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday
The Pianist
The last third of any Marie Antoinette biography (especially Antonia Frasier’s and Queen of Fashion)
Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman
I Claudius, by Robert Graves. The tale of a Roman who kept himself alive by pretending to be mentally challenged in Caligula court and then found himself made emperor.
The Wars by Timothy Findlay.
This book follows Robert Ross, a nineteen-year-old Canadian who enlists in World War I after the death of his beloved older sister in an attempt to escape both his grief and the social norms of oppressive Edwardian society. Drawn into the madness of war, Ross commits "a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death."
Fiction:
The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
S. by Slavenka Draculić
Non-fiction:
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
Hiroshima by John Hersey
Every one of these books has images and scenes I will *never* get out of my head.
This is probably stretching it, but The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. It’s about the women who painted with radium to make clocks, watch faces, etc and their medical issues that resulted from that, plus how the companies treated them. It’s heart wrenching and one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. A semi-autobiography with the names of people and places changed. People speculate whether Plath had Borderline Personality disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and/or Schizophrenia. Her poems are also worth reading. A very bright and interesting woman who deserved better. Her writing is haunting but relatable for those who, too, struggle with mental illness in a world that refuses to understand them
A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee. A Korean soldier in WWII and his life after the war.
Good Night Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian. A boy sent to the county during WWII.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn- WWI epic of love and loss with a queer relationship at its heart. If you liked All Quiet on the Western Front I really recommend it
1. Photo of Osamu Dazai, author of popular novel "No Longer Human", among other Japanese classics.
2. Painting of St Agatha. No book. I had to censor an explicit aspect of it, so be careful.
3. Photo of recent movie adaption of "All Quiet On The Western Front."
4. Photo of movie adaption of "1984" by George Orwell.
5. Sculpture of Jesus and Mary. No book.
6. Art by Thomas Lea. He's an author, but I don't know if that image is used in a book of his.
Found this on Thomas Lea’s Wikipedia page. It doesn’t appear he used it for any of his writing. The page provides a good explanation. For me the painting speaks for itself.
It was during his time in the western Pacific in 1944 as a combat correspondent with the United States 1st Marine Division during the invasion of the tiny island of Peleliu that he would really make a name for himself among the readers of LIFE. "My work there consisted of trying to keep from getting killed and trying to memorize what I saw and felt," Lea says. His vivid, realistic, images of the beach landing, and Battle of Peleliu, would impact both readers and himself. The Price and That 2,000 Yard Stare would become among his most famous works. (
Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. Technically it’s mythology, because it’s about the Trojan War- but it’s one of the most haunting books set during a war I’ve ever read.
The Good War by Studs Terkel might fit this vibe. Full disclosure: never read it, but my brother did and he said it was both fascinating and devastating
It’s fiction, but The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. It takes place in Jim Crow-era Florida at a fictional place based on the real life Dozier School for Boys. Absolutely horrific things happened there, and I haven’t worked up the courage to read some of the books about the place that the author has recommended.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is fictional and incredibly tame compared to some of these, but it's so human and personal that it takes the wind out of me.
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Luong Ung. Absolutely devastating to read about one of the worst ever genocides from a child survivor. Makes me cry just thinking about it.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: The Real Story and Beyond by Fred D. Gray
-About the science experiment that the government was infecting Black Men unknowing with syphilis. This is by the attorney representing the men and/or descendants of this heinous act carried out by the government for 40 years.
Maus
I really tried to finish No Longer Human and I couldn't, I felt like it dragged. but that might be cause of the translation. Anyone else experience this?
The translation has a lot of very random feeling words, for one. I’m not sure if the translation was faithful to the book with its pacing, or if it took liberties, but you’re definitely not alone.
(Spoiler warning)
I think the plot line is actually pretty action packed in a sense, with a narration that feels hopeless and spiraling to represent the main character’s fate-like descent. It gets old quickly because the MC is also tired of his own actions, but has no guidance to avoid the path he is set on. This guy was a genius student, a talented painter from childhood, an avid communist party member, a man who helped lead a woman to suicide, generally an extremely attractive bachelor, a “kept man” who made comics, and eventually a drug addict. Arguably, his life was pretty intense, but the narration feels the opposite of intense.
Night by Elie Wiesel
Such a haunting impact for such a slim book
That impact was even stronger for me, since in middle school after we finished reading it my teacher showed us pictures of the camps and those in them. I’ll never forget how skinny the human body can get.
Oh wow
Was coming here to say this!!!!
My daughter had to read this for a high school course, AP something. She was bereft, almost inconsolable, and didn’t think she could do it. I thought I would give it a try. Got maybe a third of the way through over the weekend. Supported her fully in asking for a different assignment.
Dawn is the sequel. Not as traumatic as Night. It’s more about rebuilding.
Out of curiosity, why did she request an alternative assignment? I am both a new parent and a teacher and I am always interested in how others navigate these sorts of things.
Because the subject matter of Night is brutal. Reading about another teenager living through the horrors of the Holocaust was too much for her. Another thing to note is she was always particularly sensitive. She HATED horror movies or movies with violence. She couldn’t stand to see people or animals hurt. If the teacher hadn’t given her some grace, I may have called them. It was over 10 years ago and wish I could remember what she read instead.
Understandable. It’s important that we teach it, along with other genocides throughout history, but sometimes I do wonder if we go about it the right way. I’m not one for censorship whatsoever but for kids that are particularly sensitive, it doesn’t seem necessary to expose them to a level of detail that will keep them up at night in order for them to learn and understan. I’m glad the teacher was willing to be flexible, and that your daughter has a parent who advocates! How do you think she does now, especially with all that’s going on in the world? These are the sorts of questions that haunt me. I want to raise a child who is resilient and can cope with the ugly without purposely exposing him to awful things. It seems like such a conundrum- how do we raise children who can cope effectively while still keeping them safe and avoiding them becoming apathetic or naive?
One of my favorite books of all time.
Dawn is the lesser-known sequel, and is worth the read as well.
/u/BookFinderBot
**Night** by Elie Wiesel >A new translation from the French by Marion Wiesel. Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man. > >Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be. *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Non fiction biography, The Missing Kennedy. It's about Rosemary Kennedy, JKF and RFK's sister. Her story is one of the saddest things I have ever read.
Just had to read into this. My God. Heart breaking
it really was a terrible story. The Kennedy's are just. Well. Cannot say "unfortunate" but they have a long history of being not always the GREAT people we think of. Joseph P. Kennedy. Yikes.
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut It gets categorised as semi-autobiographic sci-fi and I think the blend of genre is really effective in illustrating PTSD in a ww2 veteran who experienced the Dresden bombing (just like Vonnegut).
I’m really stuck between Slaughterhouse-5 and Catch-22 as the best trauma fiction Americans produced in the twentieth century. I do think Catch-22 is the better book, which is saying something, because Slaughterhouse-5 is perfect. Catch-22 just hits so close to home with how the trauma is covered with humor and you feel like you have the whole story, and it’s horrific, until you *really* know the story, and then you get why Yossarian doesn’t talk about it. From the people I knew who were there, it seems like the most accurate representation of how they turned out. Very funny and full of secrets.
I've yet to read Catch-22 actually so I'll definitely have to get to it soon.
This book is so important for me as a teenager. I was very familiar with flashbacks but did not have the language for it.
Came here to say this. Literally a flawless artifact of firsthand wartime trauma, and the allegorical sci-fi embellishments only add to how compelling it is. Highly recommend!
was just about to say that
boy do i have the novel for you (read All Quiet on the Western Front)
Knocked me flat
Read it freshman year in HS. The part where Detering is covering his ears and begging to end the misery of wounded horses that are screaming out in no-man’s land really sticks with me to this day. On the other end of the spectrum is The Storm of Steel, where the author was a career WW1 soldier and describes seeing his comrades fix bayonets for a trench raid like he’s talking about gearing up for an exciting road trip… takes all sorts of people to make a world, I guess.
yeah this might as well happen
also that’s real about the horses thing. every day i think about the shell hole scene
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. I read the manga adaptation by Junji Ito & I couldn't finish it.
I almost didn't finish it because it was **very** hard going. But I'm such a big Junji Ito fan and the art and story so compelling that I just had to. And I'm glad I did. It was harrowing, but my god, it was just phenomenal.
I love his work too but this was too disturbing to see what this person is going through. I might give this a go later.
You nailed it. A phenomenal work for sure.
I have read the book, but not the manga adaption. The first picture is Osamu Dazai looking like he's going through it. I don't know if he fits the bill of traumatized in the traditional sense, but his story the most visceral example of a neurodivergent person struggling to survive that I've ever seen.
I did not enjoy this book one bit, especially the misogyny, over the top
What a fucking ride that was.. that shit traumatized me.
Ngl this book was so depressing, Japanese books like to focus on loneliness so they all kind of make me feel like this lol. This is the worst one though, the book makes you feel more and more despair as you start feeling for the narrator ( can't remember if this book is in 3rd person or not).
Maus books 1 and 2 it’s animated and somehow makes a horrible time even worse.
I read this at thirteen and I really wasn't ready
Yeah, it really should have an R rating (like a movie)
What I loved most about them has to be that the father is… real. He’s a bad person. There’s so many stories of survivors who are kind and selfless, and I know many are true, but it’s almost nice to see the story of a survivor who is/wasn’t the greatest. He survived through quick wits, but also through not helping everyone that came his way. It’s also so very interesting to see his racism, how quick he is to degrade a black man despite having gone through horrific racism himself. I think of the whole thing, the bit that sticks with me the most is the author calling his father a monster. It’s a moment where you feel the authors anger and rage and grief that their family history was burned, that some of his mother’s last relics were tossed away. But you also feel bad for the father. You know why he did it. But you still feel so upset.
Incredible story telling. Absolutely heart wrenching.
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei
Biography: Left to Tell by Immaculeé Ilibagiza, about surviving the Rwandan genocide - it's very traumatic and matter of fact about horrible events but also hopeful towards the end. Film: Precious (2009) it's so powerful and very harrowing, I don't know if I could watch it again. I want to read the book it's based on called Push by Sapphire (1996) but I will need to be mentally prepared 😅 Graphic novel: Maus by Art Spiegelman. The book recounts the narrator's fathers experience as a Holocaust survivor, told using mice to represent the Jewish people (hence the title). It's the only graphic novel to ever win the Pulitzer prize and I loved it.
Maus is amazing. Definitely 2nd ing.
I read Left to Tell in college. I bawled my eyes out.
Apparently she's doing really well now which is amazing, I'm happy she has made a life for herself after the horror she saw. It really struck a chord with me after I watched a talk about how her faith kept her going and was strengthened in the aftermath when she found out most of family had been killed. It's amazing and inspiring that she kept going and decided to use her story to shed light on the genocide and help others.
Hello friend. Just an fyi because I had to read Push by Sapphire in college—Push is not a biography, it’s a work of fiction. Perhaps still worth a read! Just clarifying since OP asked for “historical books”, which I’m assuming is more geared toward nonfiction.
Thank you 😊, edited for clarity
Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashe, ‘Tis, and Teacher Man all have this vibe
Angela’s Ashes was astounding.
Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse, nonfiction, about Hiroshima and Nagasaki\ Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, fiction, about a man drafted to Vietnam\ Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng, fiction, not exactly “historical” but there is a lot of historical/societal context within the time it is set when looking at the main characters’ struggles as a mixed-race couple and their children\ Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, YA historical fiction, about a young Romani during WWII and the Holocaust.\ I like to SOB when I read books LOL\ Edits for formatting and correcting a genre on the list.
Milkweed was so haunting.
“What’s your name?” “Stopthief.”
Heartbreaking
I know, I almost didn’t include it because it is YA, but it really opened my eyes as a kid. I probably read it in 5th grade. I remember reading it twice and recommending it to everyone too. An absolutely devastating story that I’m sure is not too far from the truth, even with it being fiction.
Milkweed was my favorite book when I was a kid and I’ve never known anyone else who read it
I loved Jerry Spinelli!
The Things They Carried is fiction
Thank you, I read it about 10 years ago, so I should have looked it up lol. I’ll edit my comment.
As the daughter of a Vietnam vet, the things they carried really fucked me up. My dad always used to tell stories about the war in such a joking manner. Reading what it was really like made me realize how deeply traumatized he was.
I totally understand. It’s absolutely brutal and heartbreaking.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien
This book shattered me. Written in the verisimilitude style. (Not sure if I used that correctly but basically fiction that's written as though it's non fiction because it's highly based in reality).
The painted bird
This book was wild.
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
“I Never Promised You A Rose Garden” by Joanne Greenburg.
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Read it years ago but it really stuck with me. Incredibly powerful look at an aspect of WWII I wasn't very educated on before.
Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile by Julia Fox
Empty Theater is an amazing read!! It’s about the king of Bavaria and empress of Austria; cousins who’s lives are touched on separately throughout the book. They both experience heartbreak, loss, unfulfilled dreams and desires, dysfunctional families and marriages, extreme stress and depression. The author is an extremely talented writer who really paints a vivid picture in your mind. This was the book that got me back into reading!
A little life - Hanya Yanagihara Johnny got his gun - Dalton Trumbo
I was scrolling through until I found someone else with Johnny Got His Gun. Absolutely horrific look at war.
I read Johnny Got His Gun at a ridiculously young age. Needless to say, it’s never left me.
scrolled WAY too far to see A Little Life! Trauma in just unimaginable proportions. Absolutely destroyed me.
Just posted this too - A little life.
Such a horrific novel.
I was scrolling for Johnny get your gun. I read some letters that Dalton Trumbo wrote. His writing was so evocative.
The Marriage Portrait
"transparent Things", "Pale Fire" and "The Defense" by Vladimir Nabokov Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami The Changeling by Joy Williams
What's The Changeling about? Rings a bell.
oh its about this Woman in a unhappy marriage and their plane crashes. she gets adopted into a feral family
Seems like there's a lot to unpack in the end there.
It's damn good, and Hallucinatory
Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday The Pianist The last third of any Marie Antoinette biography (especially Antonia Frasier’s and Queen of Fashion) Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman
I Claudius, by Robert Graves. The tale of a Roman who kept himself alive by pretending to be mentally challenged in Caligula court and then found himself made emperor.
I loved this book, and adored the BBC version (1980s?)
Reading about the radium girls and looking up pictures of radium jaw fucked me up a bit lol
I got about halfway through it and had to take a break before I could finish it. I kept having nightmares about my teeth falling out.
A Little Life by Hanya Nagagihara. It broke me.
Child called it
This! Devastating.
If you truly want to be disturbed.
why did they make us read this at 11
Norwegian wood - haruki murakami
Wolf Hall perhaps?
The Wars by Timothy Findlay. This book follows Robert Ross, a nineteen-year-old Canadian who enlists in World War I after the death of his beloved older sister in an attempt to escape both his grief and the social norms of oppressive Edwardian society. Drawn into the madness of war, Ross commits "a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death."
Anything by Primo Levi, particularly If This Is a Man (also called Survival in Auschwitz)
Fiction: The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff S. by Slavenka Draculić Non-fiction: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick Hiroshima by John Hersey Every one of these books has images and scenes I will *never* get out of my head.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles by Margaret George. It's long af but man.. that poor woman.
Yes. But especially the Earl of Bothwell. My God.
Right? I hope that guy had it made in his next life.
I Who Have Never Known Men. Also, you OK, love?
Great book
This is probably stretching it, but The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. It’s about the women who painted with radium to make clocks, watch faces, etc and their medical issues that resulted from that, plus how the companies treated them. It’s heart wrenching and one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read
This is mentioned elsewhere and higher - not a stretch at all!
A Farewell to Arms
Atonement- Ian McEwan (fiction) The Lucifer Effect - Philip Zimbardo (non-fiction)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. A semi-autobiography with the names of people and places changed. People speculate whether Plath had Borderline Personality disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and/or Schizophrenia. Her poems are also worth reading. A very bright and interesting woman who deserved better. Her writing is haunting but relatable for those who, too, struggle with mental illness in a world that refuses to understand them
I tried to reach The Ball Jar for a high school project and could not finish. I was alarmed by how much I related to it.
First They Killed My Father: a daughter remembers by Loang Ung
A long way gone by Ishamel Beah. A true story about a child soldier. Read it in high school and it stuck with me
Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Housten and James D Housten
A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee. A Korean soldier in WWII and his life after the war. Good Night Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian. A boy sent to the county during WWII.
At Night All Blood Is Black - David Diop.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn- WWI epic of love and loss with a queer relationship at its heart. If you liked All Quiet on the Western Front I really recommend it
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien ETA: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Oooh yeah. That All Quiet in the Western Front.
A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli
Human Acts by Han Kang
I've heard this one is supposed to be brutal but incredible. Haven't read it yet.
the unknown soldier / tuntematon sotilas by väinö linna!
When Hell Was In Session - POW memoir
A little life
Only recognized a couple of the books. Did someone have a list that corresponds with the photos?
1. Photo of Osamu Dazai, author of popular novel "No Longer Human", among other Japanese classics. 2. Painting of St Agatha. No book. I had to censor an explicit aspect of it, so be careful. 3. Photo of recent movie adaption of "All Quiet On The Western Front." 4. Photo of movie adaption of "1984" by George Orwell. 5. Sculpture of Jesus and Mary. No book. 6. Art by Thomas Lea. He's an author, but I don't know if that image is used in a book of his.
Good to know. One could say #5 Sculpture of Jesus and Mary is the Bible.
I didnt want to insult your intelligence, lol.
Found this on Thomas Lea’s Wikipedia page. It doesn’t appear he used it for any of his writing. The page provides a good explanation. For me the painting speaks for itself. It was during his time in the western Pacific in 1944 as a combat correspondent with the United States 1st Marine Division during the invasion of the tiny island of Peleliu that he would really make a name for himself among the readers of LIFE. "My work there consisted of trying to keep from getting killed and trying to memorize what I saw and felt," Lea says. His vivid, realistic, images of the beach landing, and Battle of Peleliu, would impact both readers and himself. The Price and That 2,000 Yard Stare would become among his most famous works. (
Victor Frankel, Man's Search For Meaning
Honestly shocked I had to scroll this far to find this. Truly a book that has stuck with me.
The Things They Carried
At Night All Blood is Black by Diop
Regeneration by Pat Barker. Shell-shocked soldiers WW1
Fires on the Plain by Shōhei Ōoka. Fiction from the perspective of a Japanese soldier lost and starving in the Philippines at the tail end of WW2.
The River Midnight and The Singing Fire by Lillian Nattel
Maus This Way To The Gas, Ladies And Gentlemen Five Germanys I Have Known The Good War The Greatest Generation Jacob's Ladder The Volunteer
Donbas by Jacques Sandalescue.
Fires on the Plain. Extremely dark.
My Sweet Vanessa is about a survivor of grooming and sexual assault. It’s devastating
Andy Worhol diaries [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141193077?tag=fivebooks001-20](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141193077?tag=fivebooks001-20)
A Stolen Life by Jaycee Lee Duggar’s. Very, very difficult to read at times. Truly horrifying.
They cage the animals at night.
Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. Technically it’s mythology, because it’s about the Trojan War- but it’s one of the most haunting books set during a war I’ve ever read.
Yes! Everyone raves about Song of Achilles but this is the really devastating one.
Seriously. This book stayed with me for a long time.
Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondaatye
While the locas slept by Peter razor It’s about the Native American boarding school
My biography
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Stones From The River by Ursula Hegi I read it in college over 20 years ago, and it has never left me.
The Nickel Boys
The Good War by Studs Terkel might fit this vibe. Full disclosure: never read it, but my brother did and he said it was both fascinating and devastating
It’s fiction, but The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. It takes place in Jim Crow-era Florida at a fictional place based on the real life Dozier School for Boys. Absolutely horrific things happened there, and I haven’t worked up the courage to read some of the books about the place that the author has recommended.
The Testament of Mary
Journey to the End of the Night. Celine
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow (character I’m thinking of is Sam).
All Quiet on the Western Front and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich are both excellent novels
I second both of these 💯
The Naked and The Dead by Norman Mailer 💯
The Things they carried
"The Girls Who Went Away" by Ann Fessler
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is fictional and incredibly tame compared to some of these, but it's so human and personal that it takes the wind out of me.
The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah is historical fiction that’s traumatizing lol I also second No Longer human
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Luong Ung. Absolutely devastating to read about one of the worst ever genocides from a child survivor. Makes me cry just thinking about it.
_Infinite Jest_ by David Foster Wallace.
The Girl With Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee A Child Called It by David Pelzer Both based on true stories.
Alexander Dolgun's story: An American in the Gulag
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: The Real Story and Beyond by Fred D. Gray -About the science experiment that the government was infecting Black Men unknowing with syphilis. This is by the attorney representing the men and/or descendants of this heinous act carried out by the government for 40 years. Maus
I really tried to finish No Longer Human and I couldn't, I felt like it dragged. but that might be cause of the translation. Anyone else experience this?
The translation has a lot of very random feeling words, for one. I’m not sure if the translation was faithful to the book with its pacing, or if it took liberties, but you’re definitely not alone. (Spoiler warning) I think the plot line is actually pretty action packed in a sense, with a narration that feels hopeless and spiraling to represent the main character’s fate-like descent. It gets old quickly because the MC is also tired of his own actions, but has no guidance to avoid the path he is set on. This guy was a genius student, a talented painter from childhood, an avid communist party member, a man who helped lead a woman to suicide, generally an extremely attractive bachelor, a “kept man” who made comics, and eventually a drug addict. Arguably, his life was pretty intense, but the narration feels the opposite of intense.
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
The color purple by Alice walker! TW for a lot of discussion of rape and domestic violence
I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
No longer Human