Showing results for "Master and Man" in Genre Fiction

In these two famous short novels, Leo Tolstoy takes readers to the brink of despair. At the end of life, worldly ambition offers no consolation for the spiritually empty soul, but Tolstoy is the master of themes and redemption. He turns his morbid topic into hope, leading toward spiritual awakening. Tolstoy offers his readers a lifetime of perspective on death.

Robert Musil (1880-1942) is best known for his enduring masterpiece The Man Without Qualities, one of the great European works of the 20th century. It was with The Confusions of Young Master Törless first published in 1906, a challenging but very different work, that he signalled his extraordinary talent. As the nineteenth century draws to an end, young Torless is sent to a military boarding school for the sons of the nobility on the eastern outreaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

I’ve been texting the wife I lost, the woman I loved beyond measure.... Now someone else has answered back. Gunnar Bond is broken. Three years ago, he lived through the car crash that took his wife and twins away from him - though “lived” barely describes his current state. Giving up professional hockey, going off-grid, and drinking himself into oblivion are his coping mechanisms. Another is texting his dead wife about his days without her. Therapeutic? Doubtful. Crazy? Definitely.

Brilliant but broke, a single, young entrepreneur struggles to build an independent record label, while navigating the country’s worst city for bachelorettes and an unassuming place for music success: Washington, DC. Washington, DC might be the gayest place in America. It’s the city with the highest number of same-sex relationships, but the lowest (straight) marriage rate in the country. Now, imagine being a young, single, straight woman, trying to play as an obvious underdog in DC’s dating game, while also struggling to build a business in music in a town that’s setup for legislation and politics, not entertainment.