Daily Times

Man is mortal. Hopefully, science will find a way round this sad reality. This will allow some to build bigger empires and marry more glamorous women, others to travel to more exotic countries. I will be able to read more novels. There is something about reading a novel that is uniquely magical — a transcendental moment of nirvana that I cannot get out of watching a movie, listening to music, or appreciating other-genre masterpieces such as the statue of David. So, readers, I suggest to you four novels that you must finish in your lifetimes. And, I do not simply recommend them. I also tell you why these are the best ever and must-reads during our temporary abode.

Of course, you are not likely to peruse them until you are satisfied that I have earned the right to offer this advice. Rewind to 1985-86; I was teaching Electrical Engineering and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. I had somehow managed to convince a sceptical committee to grant an engineer his weird wish to study French literature for three complete years at Oxford. Once there, Dr Nicholas Cronk disciplined me in the art of reading novels. The love of languages later took me to China where I stayed for ten years, but that story will be told some other time. Here are my four must-read novels from all literature. Enjoy.

Top of my list is Crime and Punishment by the master story-teller Dostoevsky. If I were to recommend only one novel, I would suggest Crime without any hesitation. Why? First, in Raskolnikov, we have perhaps the most psychologically developed protagonist in three hundred years of novel writing. In fact, the French aphorism “tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner” — to understand all is to forgive all — comes into full play here. How else can we justify that the pitiless murderer of two hapless women can become one of the most celebrated tragic heroes in world literature? A repulsive idea. A sublime novel.

Then, the story is spellbinding. Raskolnikov, an impecunious law student, endowed with good looks and intellectual arrogance, has been dreaming of murdering an elderly pawnbroker so that he can redistribute her wealth amongst those who are in more need. Extraordinary people, he is convinced, are above common morality. However, the deed accomplished, his conscience, rendered into some of the finest prose the literary world has seen, must now inflict the most severe retribution on him. Dostoevsky employs the inner monologue as a laser beam to peep into the deepest recesses of Raskolnikov’s anguished soul. Even the laser beam is patchy. Rambling in the street, Raskolnikov is called “Murderer” by a stranger. Febrile and hallucinating the protagonist can no longer decide if his accuser is real or a figment of his imagination.

Less dark but equally piercing is the second must-read: The Red and the Black by Stendhal. I rate it as the best novel that came out of France in the 19th century. Yes, better than Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or any other gem by Balzac or Zola. If Raskolnikov is fighting his inner demons, then Julien Sorel is fighting a war against a society which is quintessentially hypocritical, truckling, and ultimately dangerous. In one of the most astonishing scenes, when the very young Julien is seducing the mayor’s wife, the metaphors used by Stendhal are borne out of war imagery. She must be conquered. Driven by a searing ambition which scalds him day and night, Julien manages to reach the very acme of Parisian society, only to suffer one of the most spectacularly ignominious falls. We are left wondering what led to this fall: societal reaction or personal inner turmoil?

The reader will need a lighter note here. The third sublime novel is by none other than the most loved of all novelists, Charles Dickens. Of all his work, I have chosen David Copperfield. Granted, Bleak House’s prose is more magisterial, and Great Expectations is a more powerful critique of our misplaced ambitions. But in David, we experience the joyride of a lifetime because we all become David. Dickens has the uncanny ability to warm the very cockles of our hearts. When David travels on foot for weeks after bearing the torture of his tormentors to reach his great-aunt’s haven finally, or when his best friend betrays him, millions of hearts melt. And the characters. We read Dickens for the most wildly imaginative characters available in the literature. And readers, you will not get more ingeniously crafted ones than the insanely comical Micawber.

The last masterpiece is by the great near-contemporary of Dickens. Thomas Hardy has written some of the most exquisite novels in English literature. I will pick The Mayor of Casterbridge. In Henchard, Hardy has created one of the most tragic heroes of all time, replete with Aristotelian flaws, brimming with zest and talent but also camouflaging self-destructive gene-like traits. He sells his wife and daughter in a drunken fit, only to reinvent himself later as a mayor. Alas, the character is fate, and he must take the plunge again. In him, we meet ourselves but magnified many times by the power of fiction, with our strengths to overcome mishaps and the hard-wired human imperfection that must unravel us in the end. All four novels are built on poignant stories. But this explains only part of their genius. Their real forte lies in their structures and artistic achievement. After all, there is no message in literature. There is no writer present in literature. There is no objective of any literary piece. There is just the text and of course the joy of reading and interpreting it, again and again. I read and re-read these and other novels. Alas, I have only one lifetime, and I fear that the scientists may not be able to extend my life in time.

Dr Aamir Khan received a First-Class degree in French literature from Oxford and can be contacted at aamir3123@gmail.com