By BG Authors Team
Have you ever read a book where the premise, the characters, or the plot were absurd? If you have, then you’ll find more books just like it here. If you haven’t, then you definitely have to read one just to know what we mean by absurd. Check out what some of our team views as the most absurd book they’ve ever read below.
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk | Written by Emma Keeling
I started typing out a little summary of Fight Club and realized… there’s no way it would be little and there’s no way I could explain the storyline to make it sound like a book you actually wanted to read. You would probably think I was crazy myself for thinking it was such a good read. There’s a lot of randomness, perspectives, and genuine confusion throughout a lot of the book. This one-of-a-kind story seems to thrive off of the utter chaos that the narrator is going through. While reading Fight Club, it felt like I was reading one long, continuous thought that was so raw and uncensored to what the narrator was thinking. There was full transparency in the narrators fight against himself and his fight against the general order of the world as we know it. The look on my face while reading this book was definitely one of confusion – but somehow, I couldn’t stop reading it.
And when I finally finished, I wasn’t exactly confident in my thoughts on the book. I think it’s such an absurd book because even months after I read it, I’m still thinking about it and how it astonished me. The depth of the narrator, the buried themes and disguised motifs all contribute to why it’s such a crazy and good novel. Fight Club is also a popular movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, but I recommend reading the book before seeing the movie – if I hadn’t, the movie wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable.
After you read the book, check out the movie at this link: https://amzn.to/3nEOglH
Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh | Written by Nathan Halm
Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh is a novel depicting Sudhir’s encounter, befriending, and studies of a Chicago-based street gang over a period of years. Sudhir, a University of Chicago Sociology student, sets out to study first-hand the impoverished communities of Chicago after learning about the lack of census data that exists for many neighborhoods. An absurd turn of events leads to Sudhir stumbling upon the gang’s meeting place and eventually the gang welcome’s Sudhir as an amusing observer of the operation’s criminal yet sophisticated activities. Sudhir learns of the gang’s corporate-like procedures and documents them in this very interesting and unique book.
This account of Sudhir’s relationship with the gang even jumpstarted his interest in American poverty and underground markets, he has written multiple books on the subject following this first work. I recommend Gang Leader for a Day for anyone who has an interest in sociology, economics, poverty and criminality in America or to anyone who simply enjoys an absurd yet very insightful story.
The Trial by Franz Kafka | Written by Brendan Lanier
I bought this book after hearing about and becoming interested in Franz Kafka’s writing. Written in 1914 and left unfinished, Franz Kafka’s absurd novel The Trial follows a surreal and nightmarish ordeal. Kafka’s novel follows a banker named Josef K. who one morning finds himself arrested by two strange officials for an unknown crime. Throughout the novel, he must try to defend himself against the enigmatic and crushing legal system that prosecutes him. Set in a dreamlike environment filled with weird characters and unusual settings, The Trial contains a surreal but interesting plot that will both baffle and excite readers.
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders | Written by Mary Ross
The first time I read this book, I was a senior in high school. Though I was utterly fascinated with the premise of the book, there’s no denying that it’s incredible absurd. To start, each chapter of the book is told from a different character that exists in the bardo. The bardo, as it is in this story, refers to the Buddhist idea that is loosely a state of existence between a death in one life and rebirth in another. In this book, each one of the characters in the bardo all are in a sense “stuck” as they are trying to understand lessons from their previous life to carry it into the next. Seems somewhat out of the ordinary thus far, right?
Now add two more characters: President Abraham Lincoln and his recently deceased son, Willie. Willie is in the bardo with all of these other characters, while President Lincoln remains in the world we all know, mourning his son. We are able to see Lincoln cradle his dead son’s body from within the bardo, despite Lincoln being in the real world. The story follows all the characters in the bardo trying to care for Willie and help him pass on to the next life. This definitely is worth your read if you love discussing the human condition from various places throughout life and death.
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