Matura Reading List

The following list consists of suggestions made by English teachers at the KSA.
As a student you should contact your English teacher to find out more about authors and their works.

Plays

Short Stories

Novels

Plays

Albee, Edward: Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf, The American Dream, The Zoo Story
(Fairly difficult psychological studies into the abysses of the American society of the 20th century.)

Beckett, Samuel: Waiting for Godot, Happy Days
(Classics of modern drama. Could well be combined with French.)

Miller, Arthur: All My Sons, A View from the Bridge, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible
(Less difficult than Albee, but still very interesting and moving dramas on the not-so-bright side of the American Dream.)

Osborne, John: Look Back in Anger
(A very critical view on a young generation without aims or heroes.)

Priestley, J.B.: An Inspector Calls
(A police story with a very strong moral appeal for more social responsibility. Farily easy.)

Russell, William: Educating Rita
(A funny modern adaptation of the classic Pygmalion topic, including the question who teaches whom.)

Shaffer, Peter: Amadeus, Equus, The Royal Hunt of the Sun
(Basically psychological plays, dealing with mediocrity and failure. (in the fields of music, psychology, religion and politics.)

Shakespeare, William: Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, Julius Caesar (or any other play)
(Masterpieces, but ever so difficult.)

Shaw, G.B.: Pygmalion, Julius Ceasar
(Character studies and social criticism - not too difficult.)

Williams, Tennessee: A Streetcar Named Desire, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(Very, very intense plays on the dark sides of man's character, dealing with topics such as the loss of youth, alcoholism, homo-sexuality, guilt and violence.)

Wilde, Oscar: The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan
(Rather flat society plays of the late 19th century. Fun to read.)

Wilder, Thornton: Our Town
(Tries to answer the question: what do we live for? Also decribes everyday life in an ordinary American town. Very philosophical.)

Short Stories

Dahl, Roald: Kiss Kiss, Tales of the Unexpected
(Funny, brilliant, nasty. Not always easy to read. Not too much in terms of interpretation.)

Hemingway, Ernest: In Our Time
(The first modern short story collection. Highly symbolical and rather difficult.)

Joyce, James: Dubliners
(Studies into characters of people living in Dublin, thus a panoramic view of Dublin at the turn of the century. Absolutely brilliant, highly symbolical, rather difficult, but very rewarding.)

Mansfield, Katherine: The Garden Party
(The short story collection when it comes to social criticism. Next to Joyce's Dubliners.)

McCullers, Carson: The Ballad of the Sad Café
(This long story is even more melancholic and sadder than its title. Story of broken love, set in a hot and dusty American village in the middle of nowhere.)

Sillitoe, Alan: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
(Very touching stories, usually dealing with outsiders and outcasts of society. Mostly written in the 60s, still very up-to date.)

Novels

Adams, Douglas: The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
(Mad, startling, confusing, enormous fun to read, part one in a "trilogy of four". Science fiction at its very best.)

Amis, Kingsley: Lucky Jim
(An amusing satire on English university life in the 60s of this century. Very funny, prototype of the anti-hero.)

Blixen, Karen: Out of Africa
(You all know the film. The story of a very strong woman. Good stuff for all the women's lib fighters at our school.)

Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451
(A dark and threatening anti-utopia, depicting a totalitarian American society where books are banned.)

Burgess, Anthony: A Clockwork Orange
(A very pessimistic look into a not too far away future. Full of horrible violence. Questions of freedom and self-determination are dealt with.)

Caroll, Lewis: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(Some people call it a children's book. They can't have read it.)

Capote, Truman: In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany's
(In Cold Blood: An experiment, a so-called documentary novel on a murder-case in the American mid-west. Once you start reading you can hardly stop. Breakfast at Tiffany's: Funny, light, very amusing. The question is: Where do we belong?)

Chatwin, Bruce: Songlines
(A novel on the culture of the aboriginals. It's a mixture between travelogue, essay, and novel; an introduction to "down under".)

Chevalier, Tracy: Girl with a Pearl Earring
(The story of an unusual relationship between a maid and her master.)

Conrad, Joseph: The Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness
(Adventure stories in exotic settings that overflow with very detailed description and character study. Reflecting a deep knowledge of what might be called the human soul. Rather difficult. Heart of Darkness formed the basis for Apocalypse Now.)

Doctorow, E.L.: Ragtime
(The story of an American period in which the only constant feature was change. A fascinating mix of reality and fiction.)

Doyle, Roddy: The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van
(Two of Doyle's trilogy on a Dublin working class area, where in spite of poverty and alcohol, people have remained people. Very funny, apart from some Irish working class slang not too difficult, either.)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby
(The love-story by the chronicle writer of the jazz-age, the roaring twenties and prohibition.)

Flagg, Fanny: Fried Green Tomatoes
(The story of an extraordinary woman, making another woman aware of her potential. Touching. Easy once one has got the nack of it.)

Forster, E.M.: A Passage to India, A Room with a View
(A Passage to India: A novel on friendship. Very intense, very precise descriptions and character studies. Brilliant but difficult. Among other topics dealing with the difficulties of British -Indian relationships before Indian independence.
A Room with a View: the irony of society conventions at the turn of the century. Italian and British ways of life contrasted.)

Golding, William: Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors
(Both books are masterpieces, going into the question of human nature as such. Quite difficult, but very rewarding.)

Greene, Graham: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Quiet American, The Comedians, The Third Man
(The Power and the Glory deals with Catholicism and what true belief can make out of a man. The Quiet American is about the Vietnam and the way the Americans got involved there - at least on the surface. The Third Man is a crime thriller placed in divided Vienna right after World War II. Brighton Rock: Pinky, a boy gangster in the pre-war Brighton underworld, is a Catholic dedicated to evil and damnation. The Comedians: Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt Papa Doc and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secrete police.)

Hardy, Thomas: Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles
(Violence and scandal in an idyllic rural community.)

Heller, Joseph: Catch 22
(An anti-war novel, showing all the absurdity and madness of the war machinery.)

Hemingway, Ernest: To Have and Have not, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls
(To Have and Have not is about a man's fight for a decent life in recession torn Florida of the thirties. A Farewell to Arms is a moving love-story and anti-war novel in the setting of World War I. For Whom the Bell Tolls is the same, only place and time (1937, Spain) are different, and the style is a bit more pathetic. The Old Man and the Sea is a brilliant short novel dealing with the essence of being a man.)

Hill, Susan: I'm the King of the Castle
(An utterly black and bleak look into the abysses of human badness.)

Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World
(Some may wish it would come true. With parallels to genetic manipulation. Do we have the right to be sad?)

Johnston, Jennifer: How Many Miles to Babylon?
(Probably one of the best anti-war novels. Complex, moving and very convincing.)

Joyce, James: The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(Rather demanding. An autobiographical study into the makings of an artist.)

Kesey, Ken: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
(Forget the film. The novel is ten times better - and much more painful.)

Kureishi, Hanif: The Buddha of Suburbia
(All the trouble of growing up. Warning: very outspoken about sexuality and drugs.)

Lawrence, D.H.: Lady Chatterley's Lover
(The "scandalous book" in which the author studies social class and human relationship.)

Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mocking Bird
(A touching story of a young girl growing up in a southern state of the USA, at the time of segregation. A classic!)

London, Jack: The Call of the Wild
(A darwinistic view of life - with a tendency that makes it possible to interpret it as a socio-darwinistic justification for fascism.)

MacLaverty, Bernard: Cal, Lamb
(Cal depicts the troubled times in Northern Ireland, at the same time it's a novel about growing up and a love story. Lamb is a very bitter criticism on some aspects of youth-correction centres and homes for young offenders.)

Morrison, Toni: Jazz, Song of Solomon
(Jazz: Black man's movement from rural to urban emotional jungle. A novel of alienation. Song of Solomon: A young spoilt man's journey back to his roots and into himself. Both are very demanding reading.)

Ondjaatje, Michael: The English Patient
(Sweet and sour: the saddest and most romantic anti-war novel.)

Orwell, George: Burmese Days, 1984, Animal Farm
(Burmese Days is an early novel, largely autobiographic, dealing with the problems of British Imperialism. 1984 is the anti-utopia on totalitarianism. Animal Farm is a parable on the betrayed revolution.)

Patton, Alan: Cry, the Beloved Country
(South Africa at the time of apartheid.)

Salinger, John: The Catcher in the Rye
(Juvenile American trying to find himself after being kicked out of his school.)

Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
(The classic horror novel with one scene set in Lucerne. Go for local colour!)

Sillitoe, Alan: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
(The working-class novel. Alienation and amusement in the life of a young Northern English working-class hero. Makes entertaining reading.)

Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, The Moon is Down
(In Cannery Row Steinbeck writes about a stretch of street and its inhabitants in a South Californian coast town. Lots of simple but useful truth about life and people. Of Mice and Men is set in the milieu of migrating landless workers, showing their dreams and the hopelessness of their lives. The Moon is Down was written by Steinbeck for allied war-propaganda in World War II.)

Stoker, Bram: Dracula
(No comment, finish reading before midnight. Get some garlic ready.)

Walker, Alice: The Color Purple
(A young girl is raped by the man she calls father; her two children are taken away from her. This is the beginning of a touching story of emancipation and liberation set in the harsh segregated world of the Deep South between the wars. Not too easy to read.)

Walker, Alice: Possessing the Secret of Joy
(It's the sequel to THE COLOR PURPLE: A minor character (Tashi), who grows up in Africa and decides to go through the traditional initiation ceremony. She tells her story as she leaves Africa but takes "her wound with her to America". A novel on a highly delicate subject told in Walker's masterful and unforgettable way.)

Webb, Charles: The Graduate
(Having graduated from college, a young man finds out that he doesn't know anything about life. So he sets out to find out ...)

Wells, H.G.: The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine
(Two of Wells' science fiction works. Interesting in as far as they throw a bright light on Victorian mentality, belief in technology and progress.)

Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray
(Only for friends of the aesthetic, romantic and obscure.)