Bildungsromans

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Pip doesn't expect much from life... His sister makes it clear that her orphaned little brother is nothing but a burden on her. But suddenly things begin to change. Pip's narrow existence is blown apart when he finds an escaped criminal, is summoned to visit a mysterious old woman and meets the icy beauty Estella. Most astoundingly of all, an anonymous person gives him money to begin...

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude Morel devotes her life to her sons. But conflict is inevitable when Paul seeks relationships with women to escape the suffocating grasp of his mother. As profoundly affecting today as it was nearly a century ago, this is the peerless Lawrence at his most personal.

Dune by Frank Herbert

Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Maud'dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family - and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream. A stunning blend of adventure and...

To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

Lawyer Atticus Finch defends a black man charged with the rape of a white woman. Through the eyes of Atticus's children, Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores with rich humor and unanswering honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930's.

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squire - though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to make his own fortune and Sophia follows him to London to escape an arranged marriage...

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, providing an oblique self-portrait of the young Joyce. At its center are questions of origin and source, authority and authorship, and the relationship of an artist to his family, culture, and race. Exuberantly inventive, this coming-of-age story is a tour de force of style and technique.

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about...

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The majority of the novel is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a highly sensitive and passionate temperament, and sent to his friend Wilhelm. In these letters, Werther gives a very intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim, where he meets and falls in love with Lotte, a beautiful young girl who is taking care of her...

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Amir, a well-to-do Pashtun boy, and Hassan, a Hazara who is the son of Ali, Amir's father's servant, spend their days in the hitherto peaceful city of Kabul, kite fighting. Amir's father, a wealthy merchant, whom Amir affectionately refers to as Baba, loves both boys, but is often more harshly critical of Amir, considering him weak and lacking in courage. Amir finds a kinder fatherly...

Candide by Voltaire

Social satire about a young man who believes, despite much evidence to the contrary, that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds".