The Bonfire of the Vanities is a novel by Tom Wolfe about a trial of a wealthy New York bond trader named Sherman McCoy for a hit and run accident involving a black boy in the Bronx. Over the course of the novel, McCoy's mistress Maria Ruskin is investigated as an accomplice after escaping the country. Eventually Ruskin escapes prosecution and McCoy is tried for vehicular manslaughter. The novel deals with issues of class and race in the 1980s.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about Ivan Denisovich, a falsely-convicted prisoner serving a ten-year sentence in the gulag, a forced labor camp. The book recounts the horrible conditions suffered by gulag prisoners: harsh punishments, extreme cold, lack of proper clothing, lack of food, brutal physical labor and sickness. Though Ivan Denisovich wakes up sick and is punished, then sent off to work, he survives the day and even goes to bed feeling OK.
Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories contains several classic early American tales, including that of Ichabod Crane, the nervous schoolteacher who is frightened by the Headless Horseman, and Rip Van Winkle, who falls asleep for 20 years only to awaken and discover that his nagging wife has died. These stories often delve into class issues and display an affection for poorer, virtuous characters; colonial America, English tradition, greed, imagination, and death are also explored in these stories.
The Death of Ivan Ilych is a novella by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy that tells the story of a dying man's moral and spiritual vacillations and eventual religious epiphany. Ivan Ilych is a wealthy judge dying after an accidental injury. As he approaches death, he reflects on his own life full of self-interest, superficiality and a fear of death, and, on the other hand, the life of a peasant named Gerasim who is compassionate and does not fear death.
Miguel de Ceravantes' novel Don Quixote tells the story of Alonso Quijano, a man who becomes so engrossed in his books about knights and chivalry that he decides to become one himself. Though these books are clearly fictional, Alonso doesn't see them that way, and he renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha". Don Quixote sets out on an adventure as a knight in shining armor along with a horse he names "Rocinante".
Fathers and Sons is a novel about two young men, Arkady and Bazarov, who have recently graduated from the University of Petersburg and travel to the countryside to visit their families. The two men quarrel over several women they fall in love with and, in the end, Bazarov dies of typhus and Arkady marries one of these women, Katya. The novel examines the generational differences in Russia at the time, between the old generation and a younger generation of nihilists. The novel presents love as a redemptive force.