7 Best Short Stories Absurdist

Absurdist fiction is a genre of fictional narrative (traditionally, literary fiction), most often in the form of a novel, play, poem, or film, that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. The critic Augst Nemo selected seven short stories of the absurd for his appreciation: - A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka - In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka - Before the Law by Franz Kafka - Ex Oblivione by H. P. Lovecraft - Andrey Semyonovich by Daniil Kharms - A sonnet by Daniil Kharms - Symphony no. 2 by Daniil Kharms For more books with interesting themes, be sure to check the other books in this collection!

Daniil Kharms was a representative of avant-garde trends in the Soviet literature. During his lifetime, Kharms was best-known for his humorous children's stories. His other works, held in private archives, were rediscovered in the late 1960s and today his fame rests chiefly on his experimental, absurd prose pieces. The critic August Nemo has selected seven short stories by this author that remain surprising and innovative: - Symphony no. 2 - On phenomena and existences - No. 1 - The thing - Andrey Semyonovich - An unexpected drinking bout - The destiny of a professor's wife - The memoirs of a wise old man

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Neil Cornwell's study, while endeavouring to present an historical survey of absurdist literature and its forbears, does not aspire to being an exhaustive history of absurdism. Rather, it pauses on certain historical moments, artistic movements, literary figures and selected works, before moving on to discuss four key writers: Daniil Kharms, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien. The absurd in literature will be of compelling interest to a considerable range of students of comparative, European (including Russian and Central European) and English literatures (British Isles and American) - as well as those more concerned with theatre studies, the avant-garde and the history of ideas (including humour theory). It should also have a wide appeal to the enthusiastic general reader.

The National Book Award–winning story collection from the author of The Orphan Master’s Son offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world. “MASTERFUL.”—The Washington Post “ENTRANCING.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “PERCEPTIVE AND BRAVE.”—The New York Times Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear. In “Nirvana,” a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • San Francisco Chronicle • USA Today AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • Marie Claire • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • BuzzFeed • The Daily Beast • Los Angeles Magazine • The Independent • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews “Remarkable . . . Adam Johnson is one of America’s greatest living writers.”—The Huffington Post “Haunting, harrowing . . . Johnson’s writing is as rich in compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes Fortune Smiles worth treasuring.”—USA Today “Fortune Smiles [blends] exotic scenarios, morally compromised characters, high-wire action, rigorously limber prose, dense thickets of emotion, and, most critically, our current techno-moment.”—The Boston Globe “Johnson’s boundary-pushing stories make for exhilarating reading.”—San Francisco Chronicle

One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.

"Daniil Kharms has long been heralded as one of the most iconoclastic writers of the Soviet era, but the full breadth of his achievement is only in recent years, following the opening of Kharms's archives, being recognized internationally. Thanks to the efforts of translator and poet Matvei Yankelevich, English language readers now have a comprehensive collection of the prose and poetry that secured Kharms's literary reputation that grew in Russia even as the Soviet establishment worked to suppress it."--Amazon.com.

Franz Kafka, the author has very nicely narrated the story of Gregou Samsa who wakes up one day to discover that he has metamorphosed into a bug. The book concerns itself with the themes of alienation and existentialism. The author has written many important stories, including ‘The Judgement’, and much of his novels ‘Amerika’, ‘The Castle’, ‘The Hunger Artist’. Many of his stories were published during his lifetime but many were not. Over the course of the 1920s and 30s Kafka’s works were published and translated instantly becoming landmarks of twentieth-century literature. Ironically, the story ends on an optimistic note, as the family puts itself back together. The style of the book epitomizes Kafka’s writing. Kafka very interestingly, used to present an impossible situation, such as a man’s transformation into an insect, and develop the story from there with perfect realism and intense attention to detail. The Metamorphosis is an autobiographical piece of writing, and we find that parts of the story reflect Kafka’s own life.