When you are surrounded by chaos and just need to escape from the realities of your world. You take a step into the world of fiction where some stories just create a home in your heart and some stick forever as a mark that change the way you think. In midst of your own whirlpool of threating thoughts, reading allows you to see from a different perspective, a different reality that may not fix things for you but it will help you realize that your own problems may not be as magnanimous.
Authors like Elif Shafaq, Khaled Hosseni, Harper lee, Franz Kafka and Paulo Coelho, creates a world of fiction while targeting a reality full of melancholy and heartaches, they write fictional books that will change the way you think.
To Kill a Mocking Bird By Harper Lee
To Kill a Mocking Bird is a book that has the power to change your perspective immediately, a book about White privilege, Feminism, Racism, Inequality, Hypocrisy and all the major indifferences of the world. Despite the fact that the book comprises of such grave issues, Harper lee still manages to keep it light hearted through the character of Scout, who is inquisitive, a pantomath, who craves knowledge like a junk food. A smart, quick-witted six-year-old girl narrates the story as she questions the world and its inequalities. The plot follows Atticus, a white male lawyer, on a journey to defend a Black man accused of rape.
Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka
“What am I doing here in this endless winter?”
a quote by Kafka that will pierce your heart even after a 100 years, its relevant, and how most of us feel today. Metamorphosis is a book based on absurdist fiction that makes you question your reality, your purpose and makes you wonder what is real. Despite being just 80 pages long, the author makes this novella a difficult read because, within all its surrealism, they hide something very real and scary.
The story is about a travelling salesman, Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning to find that he has turned into an insect. An allegorical narrative, steeped in dark humor and surrealism, follows thereafter. A book that creeps into your brain and stimulates the evocative feelings about life, death, and purpose
40 Rules Of Love- Elif Shafak
If you had to find wisdom, this book is an epitome of it, it consists of life lessons for every aspect of your life. A book deeply rooted in spiritualism, a guidebook for when you feel lost, it will teach you something new every time you read it. We all feel sinful, hypocrite and fake and this books delves into that, it focuses on those characters of the society that are insignificant and are apparently flawed
Ella, a lonely, depressed housewife in the USA, starts reading an unpublished manuscript about 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi and his companion/mentor Shams of Tabriz. By exploring the lives and teachings of the two mystics, Ella is compelled to change her life and is determined to meet the manuscript’s mysterious author.
A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
A heart wrenching reality about the life of Afghan women under the Taliban rule. Mariyam, a girl full of life, excitement, and innocence, unaware of the bloodcurdling reality that life will place her at. It will strip her of her identity, her freedom and opinions. It is a story of million Afghan women and their sufferings they had to endure under the made up rules of Islam by Afghan Taliban. Set in Afghanistan from the 1960s to the 1990s, spanning from Soviet occupation to the Taliban control, following the lives of two women in their marriages and in their war-torn country. Expecting domestic abuse, graphic war descriptions and a main theme of oppression in Afghan women.
By the end you are not only left with a tear, but with a fire lit within. It is above all a story of hope and of life, the heroism that comes with love and the inevitable strife that comes with living. Inspirational, outstanding, every man and women must read this tale.
Alchemist- Paulo Coelho
Written by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho in 1988. The theme is about finding one’s destiny or purpose in life.
The story is about a Shepherd boy from Spain whose name is Santiago. He keeps getting the same dream about treasures that are lying in the Pyramids of Egypt. He embarks on a journey to follow his dream after meeting an old king who offers him magic stones and advice.
A famous quote from the book that is a life lesson in itself,
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”
These fictional books that will change the way you think, will shape your perspective and will provide you with a new vision to look at the world from. We all feel stuck, confused and sometimes you just need that push, a clarity, and reading these fictional books will wrap you in a grim reality, that will force you to think outside of the echo chamber that you are stuck in.
