 | The Outsider (Penguin Modern Classics) by Albert Camus
Buy new: £5.79 / Used from: £2.84 Basically, one of the most disturbing books I've ever read in my life. If you didn't think life and death were totally absurd, you will after reading this!
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 | Young Adam (International Writers) by Alexander Trocchi
Buy used from: £0.89 Darkly brilliant. Again, a pretty disturbing book, not least for the suggested necrophilia! Tense story of a young Scottish outsider working on a barge.
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 | Candide and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics) by Voltaire
Buy used from: £0.01 An absolutely fantastic, if heavy handed, satire of Leibnitz's Optimism. The best satire I have ever read. Some of the nastiest and most scathing irony ever written, in my opinion!
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 | One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Penguin Modern Classics) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Buy new: £5.13 / Used from: £0.01 Subtly shocking expose of a Russian gulag. If the Gulag Archipelago is a little too grim (or verbose) for you, this is similarly disturbing.
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 | Of Mice and Men (Penguin Modern Classics) by John Steinbeck
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £0.01 One of those that just has to be on the list. A must-read Depression-era masterpiece.
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 | Collected Poems by Philip Larkin
Buy new: £7.76 / Used from: £5.82 My favourite poet. Very grim, but (sometimes, at least) life-assuring poetry at its best. Check out Sunny Prestatyn - my favourite poem!
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 | Crash by J.G. Ballard
Buy used from: £1.00 Story of a young Londoner who gets his sexual kicks out of car crash victims. Makes for some fairly disturbing reading.
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 | Sons and Lovers (Penguin Popular Classics) by D.H. Lawrence
Buy new: £2.00 / Used from: £0.01 D.H. Lawrence is one of my favourite authors. Absolutely spellbinding semi-autobiographical account of Paul Morel's relationships with his mother, and his two lovers.
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 | Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Buy used from: £0.01 Utterly utterly charming story of sexual awakening, class differences and the effects of WWI. As fresh as when it was first published!
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 | Existentialism and Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre
Buy used from: £3.00 A really slim starter to existentialism! Not exactly one for fun, but fascinating reading.
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 | The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Buy new: £4.44 / Used from: £0.40 Great fable on man and nature, success and failure.
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 | Story of O by Pauline Reage
Buy new: £4.97 / Used from: £2.68 If you buy it online, it saves any embarassment at the store. But this is a fascinating story of masochism, and you may find it a guilty pleasure.
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 | Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jean Rhys
Buy new: £4.92 / Used from: £2.50 If you've read Jane Eyre, this is a fantastic colonial slant on the story.
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 | Early Twentieth Century Poetry (Penguin Popular Classics)
Buy used from: £0.01 Great poetry. A little too much war poetry, maybe, but still good. The Piano (Lawrence again, I'm afraid) I liked especially.
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 | The Book of Repulsive Women by Djuna Barnes
Buy new: £9.95 / Used from: £9.15 More popular for Nightwood, Barnes writes some good verse.
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 | The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
Buy new: £6.96 / Used from: £2.00 Brilliant introduction to philosophy; light-hearted and life affirming. The TV series was good as well.
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 | The Annotated Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Buy new: £9.25 / Used from: £6.81 Brilliant, challenging book about an intellectual who falls in love with a twelve year old nymphet (as he calls her). Interesting to read in light of the paedophile witch hunts.
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 | A Happy Death (Penguin Modern Classics) by Albert Camus
Buy used from: £0.01 To end pretty much where I began. Great precursor to The Outsider. Not as disturbing, and one to read after you've read it's follow-up (if I can call it that).
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