Skip to main content

11 Short Classic Book That You Can Read In A Single Sitting

To some people reading classic literature is a big challenge – an investment of time and mental energy. Usually classics are a big fat books full of wisdom and philosophies. However, here are few examples of short classic book that you can read in a day or in a single sitting; yet they are equally meaningful, emotionally challenging and beautifully written.


The Outsider


Author: Albert Camus

This novel by French author, published in 1942, is often cited as Camus’ example of philosophy of the absurd and existentialism. The title character is Meursault, a French-Algerian man, who attends his mother’s funeral. He killed an Arab man in French Algiers after a few days of funeral. The Arab man was involved in a conflict with a friend. Meursault is sentenced to death after trial. The story of the book is divided in two parts. One part illustrates Meursault’s views before the murder and another after the murder. This short classic book ends as a meditation on the meaninglessness of existence.



The Quiet American


Author: Graham Greene

This 1954 classic by Graham Greene is clear-cut account of the futility of war. The inspiration of this book came from the time Greene spent in French Indochina as a war correspondent. This short classic book recounts the French colonialism in Vietnam being eradicated by the Americans in the 1950s. The book has received much attention because of its prediction of the Vietnam War outcome.



The Great Gatsby


Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

I loved this classic by F. Scott Fitzgerald since I first read it (no need to mention that I read it several times).  The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, is recognized as one of the greatest books ever written. You can finish this short classic book in one sitting. The story revolves around Jay Gatsby, the young and mysterious millionaire on Long Island, in the summer of 1922. The consequences following his quixotic passion and obsession for beautiful Daisy Buchanan twist the plot and makes it darker. The themes of book are decadence, idealism, social upheaval and resistance to change.



Night


Author: Elie Wiesel

In this book Elie Wiesel wrote his experience with his father in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Auschwitz. In just over 100 pages short classic book, Elie wrote about God of Death and his increasing disgust towards humanity. It’s not a book that makes you happy but it should be mandatory reading for humanity.



Animal Farm


Author: George Orwell

This 1945 allegorical short classic book by George Orwell is a light-hearted political satire. The book illustrates the events leading to the Russian Revolution in 1917 and then to the Stalin Era of Soviet Union. In Orwell’s analogy, the revolt of animal against farmer Jones represents October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution; the Battle of the Cowshed represents the allied invasion of Soviet Russia; the pigs' rise to pre-eminence portrays the rise of a Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR.



The Pearl


Author: John Steinbeck

The American author John Steinbeck wrote this classic book in 1947. The story revolves around a pearl diver, Kino, who finds a beautiful pearl from the sea. He wants to sell it for a good price so that he can pay for his sick child’s treatment. Story is about man's greedy and evil nature as well as defiance of societal norms. This short classic book by Steinbeck, inspired from a Mexican folk tale, is truly hard-hitting read.



Slaughterhouse-Five


Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1969, is one of the longer books on this list. But you will hardly notice time when you are reading it and probably finish it in one sitting. The plot hinges between the aliens, time travel, World War II history, and some times personal anecdotes. This iconic short classic book is Vonnegut's one of the most influential and classic work.



The Day of the Locust


Author: Nathanael West

The Day of the Locust by the American author Nathanael West was first published in 1939. The plot of the novel revolves around Tod Hackett, a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts. The novel set in 1930s illustrating the great depression in a very general way.



One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich


Author: Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer, wrote this novel and first published in 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir. The story, set in Soviet Labour Camp in 1950s, is about a single day in life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, an ordinary prisoner. Government accused Ivan of becoming a spy after captured by German during WWII; and sentenced 10 years in forced labour camp even if he was innocent.



The Picture of Dorian Gray


Author: Oscar Wilde

Dorian Gray is a young and handsome man. Dorian listens to Lord Henry and impressed by his hedonistic world views. He begins to thing that beauty is the only aspect of the life worth pursuing. He wishes to remain as beautiful as he is now at any cost. Comedic playwright Oscar Wilde wrote this philosophical novel.  You can finish this short classic book in a day.



The Old Man and the Sea


Author: Ernest Hemingway

The American author Ernest Hemingway wrote this short classic book and published in 1952. It was Hemingway’s last major work in fiction and one of the most famous works which lead Hemingway to a Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1954. It’s a simple story of an aging Cuban fisherman named Santiago and his struggle with catching a giant marlin fish.






Read about the authors here:

Read book reviews here:

Comments

  1. Therapy With Books8 July 2018 at 20:45

    Have started reading the Quite American but left it. Will pick this back up. Thanks for the inspiration and the reminder!

    ReplyDelete
  2. DD28 July 2018 at 18:38

    The book by Albert Camus was one of my favorites. The name of the book is The Stranger (not the outsider).

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GEORGE ORWELL

English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. Born: 25 June 1903 Motihari, Bengal Presidency, British India. Died: 21 January 1950, University College Hospital, London, England. Birth Name: Eric Arthur Blair Pen Name: George Orwell Early Life Born on June 25, 1903, Eric Arthur Blair who later decided on George Orwell as his pen name was the second child of British parents Richard Walmesly Blair and Ida Mabel Limonzin who then resided in Indian Bengal where Richard was an employee of the British Civil Services. George Orwell created some of the sharpest satirical fiction of the 20th century with such works as Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was a man of strong opinions who addressed some of the major political movements of his times, including imperialism, fascism and communism. The son of a British civil servant, George Orwell spent his initial days in India, where his father was stationed. His mother brought him and his older sister, Marjorie, to England about a year aft...
Post a Comment
Read more

You will never lose interest in these books with unreliable narrator

Unreliable Narrator When the narrator is unreliable and can’t be trusted, we, the reader have to think for ourselves to figure out the story. We’ll evaluate the situations and characters critically in the book to figure out what’s going on. Sometime we’ll draw our own conclusions and judge the characters as the author didn’t do it for us. There are so many reasons behind narrator’s reliability. Sometimes they are consciously and intentionally lying, sometimes they misunderstood the situations, and perhaps they’re drunk, or amnesiac, or suffer from some other conditions that keep us doubting their version of story. (We’re all unreliable narrators, because our version of any events or occurrence or incidents is just one of many. But that’s not what we are looking here.) Some stories are too ambiguous that they don’t resolve their plots. Readers reach to the final page without the knowledge of what’s actually happening or happened. It’s on readers how they fill the blanks. For few of us t...
5 comments
Read more