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AP LITERATURE/COMPOSITION 2016 SUMMER READING LIST The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest The Sound and Fury by William Faulkner The Compson family is falling apart. The kids run wild, the mother locks herself in her bedroom with a hot water bottle and her Bible, and the father locks himself in the den with a nice big bottle of whiskey. In other words, life isn’t exactly the sunniest. Not to worry, though: it can always get worse. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck An unforgettable portrait of the migrants who left the dust bowl for the promised land of California. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad The story tells of Charles Marlow, an Englishman who took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. The Stranger by Albert Camus A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. Sula by Toni Morrison In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Balram Halwai, is a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society. Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien This novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris 1984 by George Orwell: The story tells of Winston Smith’s confrontation with a society that controls everything: sex, thoughts, history, and individual freedom. Winston must make a decision to fight the system or give into the corruption that exists around him. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston A Black woman searches for a fulfilling relationship through two loveless marriages and finally finds it in the person of Tea Cake, an itinerant laborer and gambler. Beloved by Toni Morrison Sethe, an escaped slave who now lives in post-Civil War Ohio, has borne the unthinkable and works hard at "beating back the past." She struggles to keep Beloved, an intruder, from gaining possession of her present while throwing off the legacy of her past. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley A fantasy of the future that sheds a blazing critical light on the present – considered to be a masterpiece. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce This novel deals with the experiences of Stephen Dedalus as he grows from a boy to a man, as he is steeped in Catholicism and then scared away from it, and as he learns the sense of Irish conventions, but then moves abroad to escape from them. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs in an effort to make her life everything she believes it should be. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, she takes drastic action, with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter. Notes From the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature. Hard Times by Charles Dickens Thomas Gradgrind raises his children, Tom and Louisa, in a sterile atmosphere of strict practicality. With no guiding principles, the young Gradgrinds sink into lives of desperation and despair, played out against the grim backdrop of Coketown, a wretched industrial community. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen A novel about a spirited young woman in early nineteenth-century England who must cope with the courtship of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte Forced by a storm to spend the night at the home of Heathcliff, Mr. Lockwood uncovers a tale of terror and hatred on the Yorkshire moors. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. The Road by Cormac McCarthy Father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy In the brothel of New Mexico hard on the frontier, Billy and Boyd Parham are just boys in the years before the Second World War, but on the cusp of unimaginable events. First comes a trespassing Indian and the dream of wolves running wild amongst the cattle lately brought onto the plain by settlers -- this when all the wisdom of trappers has disappeared along with the trappers themselves. And so Billy sets forth at the age of sixteen on an unwitting journey into the souls of boys and animals and men. Having trapped a she-wolf he would restore to the mountains of Mexico, he is long gone and returns to find everything he left behind transformed utterly in his absence. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Amir, haunted by his betrayal of Hassan, the son of his father's servant and a childhood friend, returns to Kabul as an adult after he learns Hassan has been killed, in an attempt to redeem himself by rescuing Hassan's son from a life of slavery to a Taliban official. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini A novel set against the three decades of Afghanistan's history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban, which tells the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen-year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marquez The rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo as told through the history of the Buendía family. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men of its population. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world. The Cider House Rules by John Irving Set in rural Maine in the first half of the twentieth century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch—saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St.

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