Disturbing books.

I'm reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest next. I've read the first chapter. Insane asylum in the early days when "professionals" got it all wrong. Seems pretty disturbing so far, they over-shocked this one guy and now he's a vegetable.

I've read Kafka's Metamorphasis. It was obviously notoriously pretty bizzare. VERY open to interpretation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xylophanous

Probably the weirdest - and also the bleakest - fiction I have read is Jonathan Bowden's disorientating novel Kratos. The latter deals with insanity from a Nietzschean perspective.

http://www.jonathanbowden.co.uk/images/thumb_kts.jpg

And at the very high end of the scale, particularly with regard to literary skill, is Alexander Theroux's Darconville's Cat. The novel reads like a completely misanthropic Hermann Meville, but what makes the it unusual is its very multilayered construction and the sheer baroqueness and density of the prose. Really extraordinary.

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172583713m/193408.jpg

---

Sounds very interesting. I added these two on my list. Thanks Xylophanous!:thumbs_up

Odd request but i'm looking for some "disturbing" novels. Set in a time no earlier than the 20th century.

Throwing a few titles out there to give you an idea of what i'm interested in:
In Cold Blood, A Clockwork Orange, American Psycho etc

This has been discussed here at length - if you would like to have a look:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...highlight=wasp

Oh, perfect. Thanks. :)

If you're willing to give comics/graphic novels a shot, try Preacher by Ennis/Dillion. It's certainly literary -- compelling characters, plot development, thematic. It's also highly disturbing and visual.

I recommend trying the trade paperbacks vols 1-3 to give the series a fair go. But I'll wager that if you like Clockwork Orange, you'll enjoy this comics masterpiece.

I would say the famous As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner or Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

I would say The Giver by Lois Lowry. We had to read it in class when I was in 7th grade and something about it was very disturbing to me, (although I can't remember what it was.) I'll have to read it again and see if my attitude toward it has changed any.
Also the "Child called It" books scared me, too, and I was past 7th grade when I read those.
P.G.7.

A Personal Matter and The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe. The latter has a scene in it that literally nearly made me vomit on the train to work one morning. I was standing up at the time; my legs buckled and I broke into a cold sweat. But the former is, by a few whiskers, the better book and also pretty strong medicine.

Gunter Grass- The Tin Drum
Hermann Hesse- Steppenwolf
Mikhail Bulgakov- The Master and Margarita
Franz Kafaka- The Trial, The Castle
Bataille- The Story of the Eye
Andre Breton- Nadja
Georges Perec- A Void
Alain Robbe-Grillet- The Erasers
Julio Cortazar- Hopscotch
Mario Vargas Llosa- In Praise of the Stepmother
Cormac McCarthy- Blood Meridian, Suttree, Child of God
Camus- The Stranger
John Fowles- The Collector
Nabokov- Lolita
Robert Coover- Spanking the Maid
Celine- Death on the Installment Plan

Just a few suggestions.:)

Hmmm... Master and Margarita, stlukesguild? It's unusual, but disturbing? I second Story of the Eye, though. In fact, it should be number one with a bullet in any disturbing books list.

And how could I have missed another chance to plug Blood and Guts in Highschool and Great Expectations by Kathy Acker?

Under the Skin by Michael Faber
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
First Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

never read a more disturbing book than Jonathan Littel "Le benevole", "The kindly ones"

I second The Collector by John Fowles

Querelle of Brest by Jean Genet
The Anonymous Ogres by Pascal Bruckner