The Stranger
Albert Camus, 1942
A clerk in sunstruck Algiers reports his own indifference to love, grief and guilt with unnerving calm.
Unsettling books
Some books leave you uneasy because the calm on the page doesn't match what's happening underneath. In «The Stranger», a clerk in sunstruck Algiers reports his own indifference to love, grief and guilt so evenly that the ordinary details start to feel wrong; in «Η Φόνισσα», a poor island grandmother decides she is doing the world a favour by killing the girl babies born around her, and the narration follows her mind all the way. You come to these books for that discomfort, for the sense of being led somewhere honest and disturbing rather than reassured.
A page that shows it
What if you have never once regretted anything?
Of course, I had to own that he was right; I didn’t feel much regret for what I’d done. Still, to my mind, he overdid it, and I’d have liked to have a chance of explaining to him, in a quite friendly, almost affectionate way, that I have never been able to really regret anything in all my life. I’ve always been far too much absorbed in the present moment, or the immediate future, to think back. -
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Αιχμηρά αντικείμενα
Gillian Flynn, 2012
A reporter returns to the small town she fled, sent to cover two missing girls, and finds her own family waiting with its teeth bared.
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Η Γυναίκα της Ζάκυθος
Διονύσιος Σολωμός, 1859
A fierce, strange prose satire that turns Zakynthian society into a stage for hypocrisy, war, and moral judgment.
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Το τελευταίο σπίτι της οδού Νίντλες
Catriona Ward, 2022
A terrified, gentle-voiced narrator and an eleven-year-old disappearance on his street, told and retold. A gothic puzzle that reads like a fever you can't stop watching.
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Μαχαίρι
Jo Nesbo, 2018
A river, a hidden camera, and an old man who has lost the words to raise the alarm. Nesbø at his coldest.
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Η Ανθρωπόκαινος και το Αρνητικό Υψηλό
Γιώργος Κόκκινος, 2025
A historian of ideas asks how the climate crisis rewired our sense of time, place and responsibility — and why the warnings keep failing to move us.
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Αν είχα το πρόσωπό σου
Frances Cha, 2020
In Seoul's underground room salons, three young women navigate the cost of beauty surgery, money and loyalty, narrated by a narrator who has lost her voice.
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Lord of the Flies
William Golding, 1954
Twelve boys, one island, no adults: a school story that becomes an inquiry into how quickly people build rules, and how easily they drop them.
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Το γεγονός
Annie Ernaux, 2000
Annie Ernaux turns an intimate, life-altering experience into a clear-eyed account of memory, shame, and the limits imposed on women.
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Brave New World
Aldous Huxley, 1932
An engineered future where comfort is compulsory and happiness is manufactured—and one outsider asks what was sacrificed to get it.
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde, 1890
A beautiful young man wishes his portrait would age in his place. It is a sharp, funny, then frightening study of vanity, charm and moral drift, still uncomfortably current.
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Animal Farm
George Orwell, 1945
A farm's animals overthrow their farmer and write their own rules — then discover how quickly a good slogan can be edited. A fable about power, in plain prose.
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Οιδίπους Τύραννος
Σοφοκλής, -429
A king hunts the source of a plague and discovers how little anyone can know about their own life, or command its course.
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The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1892
A woman on enforced rest in a rented house starts reading the wallpaper like a text. Short enough for one sitting, and unsettling for a long time afterwards.
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The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins, 2015
A divorced commuter fills her days watching a perfect couple from the train, until a glimpse of something wrong pulls her into their lives.
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The Silent Patient
Alex Michaelides, 2019
A psychotherapist tries to make a silent murder suspect speak, and finds his own life caught in her refusal.
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Και δεν έμεινε κανένας
Αγκάθα Κρίστι, 1939
A group of strangers arrive on an isolated island, where an unseen host turns suspicion into a deadly test of conscience.
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Μάρκος Αυρήλιος
Μάρκος Αυρήλιος, 180
A modern reader revisits Marcus Aurelius’s stoic reflections and asks what their ideals leave out.
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The Stand
Stephen King, 1978
A flu escapes a lab and empties America; survivors choose between a saintly old woman and a smiling dark man. King's big, bleak, compulsive plague epic.
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The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood, 1985
A woman survives in a theocratic state where her body is a resource; her wry, precise voice reports the daily cost of obedience.
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The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie, 1988
A hijacked plane, a metamorphosis, and two men falling through the sky into a London of migrants, visions and doubt.
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The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Mark Manson, 2016
A potty-mouthed argument that the cure for anxiety isn't caring more but choosing better what to care about — and paying the price of that choice.
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Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad, 1899
A riverboat captain in the Congo tells of a journey that strips away the idea of civilization, and of the eloquent man he went to find.
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Ἡ Τρίχα
Διονύσιος Σολωμός, 1830
Ο εθνικός ποιητής γράφει σάτιρα: ένας ζυγιαστής ζυγίζει ανθρώπους, πουλιά και πολιτικούς, κι ένα ποίημα βγαίνει από ένα όνειρο και μια τρίχα.
A taste of the feed
When fear leaves no landscape untouched.
Κ’ εγώ άκουγα μέσα μου μεγάλη ταραχή και με συνεπήρε το πνεύμα στο Μισολόγγι. Και δεν έβλεπα μήτε το κάστρο, μήτε το στρατόπεδο, μήτε τη λίμνη, μήτε τη θάλασσα, μήτε τη γη που επάτουνα, μήτε τον ουρανό· πολιορκούμενους και πολιορκισμένους και όλα τα έργα τους και όλα τα πάντα τα εκατασκέπαζε μαυρίλα και πίσσα.
Η Γυναίκα της Ζάκυθος · Διονύσιος Σολωμός
Every anniversary the same photo, and one small wish no one grants.
Όταν βλέπω το πρωτοσέλιδο, το στομάχι μου σφίγγεται. Να την. Είχα ξεχάσει πως η επέτειος είναι σήμερα. Δεν τα πάω τόσο καλά με τον χρόνο. Πάντα χρησιμοποιούν την ίδια φωτογραφία. Τα μάτια της είναι μεγάλα κάτω από το γείσο του καπέλου της, τα δάχτυλά της σφίγγουν το ξυλάκι, λες και φοβάται μην της το πάρουν. Τα μαλλιά της είναι υγρά και γυαλιστερά, κομμένα αγορίστικα. Κολυμπούσε, αλλά κανείς δεν την τυλίγει σε μια χνουδωτή πετσέτα για να τη στεγνώσει. Δεν μου αρέσει αυτό. Μπορεί να κρυώσει. Δεν δημοσιεύουν την άλλη φωτογραφία, τη δική μου. Μπήκαν σε μεγάλες φασαρίες μ’ αυτή. Αν και όχι τόσο μεγάλες, αν θέλετε τη γνώμη μου. Ήταν έξι χρονών.
Το τελευταίο σπίτι της οδού Νίντλες · Catriona Ward
A beam of light in green water, and a girl dancing in it.
Κι έτσι κάθεστε στον καναπέ και πηγαίνετε μέχρι την κάμερα μόνο για ν’ αλλάξετε μπαταρίες όταν χρειαστεί». «Κι αν η αρκούδα εμφανιστεί τη νύχτα;» «Η κάμερα έχει φωτισμό LED, κανονικό και black light: Είναι αόρατο φως, για να μη φοβίζει τα ζώα». Φως. Αυτό ήταν που έβλεπε ο ηλικιωμένος. Μια δέσμη φωτός που ερχόταν από τα δεξιά. Χωνόταν μες στο πράσινο νερό και φώτιζε το φόρεμα, και για μια ανατριχιαστική στιγμή τον έκα νε να σκεφτεί ότι έβλεπε μπροστά του ένα κορίτσι που είχε ξαναζωντανέψει και χόρευε από τη χαρά του. «Χα! Σαν επιστημονική φαντασία είναι!» Ο γέρος άνοιξε διάπλατα το στόμα του όταν είδε ένα δια στημόπλοιο να μπαίνει στην οθόνη.
Μαχαίρι · Jo Nesbo
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