Recommended Reading List

Alienation

Society is an attempt to build a large collection of people who share the same set of values and morals. However large or small the group that make up a society, you will always end up with a group of individuals who cannot fit within the accepted norm. These novels explore that sense of isolation and alienation by putting these individuals under the spotlight of their literary gaze.

The individual could be an outsider in their own society like The Wasp Factory's Frank, or a visitor to a different society in which they are unable to fit in, like Joseph K. in Kafka's America. The common theme is that they all sit outside, looking in. Trying but failing to cross the barrier to normality.

A novel might take a world in which we are familiar and twist it into a nightmare by showing it in a different light. An alienated individual might react with timity and fear or with violence and aggression. Their very alienation might lead them to greatness or disintegration. There are lots of shades between the various extremes which leads to very interested and varied results.

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