Past Events

1.1984 - Orwell

2. Madame Bovary- Flaubert

3. The Prince – Machiavelli

4. The Communist Manifesto - Marx

5. On the Origin of Species - Darwin

6. A Room of One's Own – Woolf

7. The Wealth of Nations - Smith

8. Don Quixote - Cervantes

9. The Republic - Plato

10. Uncle Tom's Cabin – Stowe

11. The Metamorphosis -Kafka

12. Guns, Germs, and Steel – Diamond

13. Anna Karenina – Tolstoy

14. Hundred Yrs of Solitude – Marquez

15. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky

16. To Kill a Mockingbird – Lee

17. Animal Farm – Orwell

18. Belle du Seigneur – Cohen

19. 1000 and 1 night

20. Les Misérables – Hugo

21. Brothers Karamazov – Dostoevsky

22. Multiple Intelligence – Gardner

23. The Trial – Kafka

24. Anne Frank

25. Disgrace – Coetzee

26. L’Étranger – Camus

27. Leviathan – Hobbes

28. When Bad Things Happen … – Kushner

29. The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald

30. The Alchemist – Coelho

31. The Master and Margarita – Bulgakov

32. To the Lighthouse – Woolf

33. Frankenstein – Selly

34. Things Fall Apart – Achebe

35. Hitchhiker’s Guide .. – Adams

36. Capitalism and Freedom – Friedman

37. Inferno – Dante

38. Brideshead Revisited – Waugh

39. Jane Eyre – Bronte

40. l'Optimisme (Candide) – Voltaire

41. The Second Sex – Beauvoir

42. All Quiet Western Front – Remarque

43. Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare

44. Midnight's Children – Rushdie

45. Perfume – Süskind

46. A Tale of Love and Darkness – Oz

47. Dune – Herbert

48. Train to Pakistan – Singh

49. The Glass Bead Game – Hesse

50. Zen & Art of Motorcycle.. – Pirsig

51. Notre Dame de Paris – Hugo

52. The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbck

53. Catch-22 – Heller

54. One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest – Kesey

55. Brighton Rock – Greene

56. Tipping The Velvet - Waters

57. On Liberty – Mill

58. God Is Not Great... – Hitchens

59. Handmaid's Tale – Atwood

60. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Hemingway

61. Adolf Hitler: My Part..- Milligan

62. Imagined Communities – Anderson

63. Unbearable Lightness Being - Kundera

64. Middlemarch – Eliot

65. Snow – Pamuk

66. 1Q84 – Murakami

67. I, Robot – Asimov

68. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Wilde

69. Letters To A Young Poet – Rilke

70. Lolita – Nabokov

71. Girl Meets Boy – Smith

72. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - J le Carre

73. Journey to the end of the night – Celine

74. Kafka on the shore – Murakami

75. Meditations – Aurelieus

76. The plague – Camus

77. Slaughterhouse-Five – Vonnegut

78. Of Mice and Men – Steinbeck

79. And Quiet Flows the Don – Sholokov

80. From Russia With Love – Fleming

81. Invisible Man – Ellison

82. Vanity Fair – Thackeray

83. Orphan Master’s Son – Johnson

84. The Shadow Factory - Bamford

85. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch

86. American Pastoral – Roth

87. A Tale of Two Cities – Dickens

88. The Selfish Gene – Dawkins

89. Buddenbrooks – Mann

90. Oryx and Crake – Atwood

91. Pride and Prejudice

92. The Remains of the Day- Ishiguro

93. The Color Purple – Walker

94. Persepolis – Satrapi

95. The Right Stuff – Wolfe

96. Vindication of the Rights of Woman

97. Watchmen - Moore/ Gibbons

98. Lord of The Flies – Golding

99. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Hardy

100. Brave New World – Huxley

101. The House of The Spirits by Isabel Allende – Isabel Allande

102. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? –Philip K. Dick

103. Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse

104. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

105. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

106. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

107. The Tin Drum - Günter Grass

108. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland –Lewis Carroll

109. Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell

110. Postcards From The Edge - Carrie Fisher

111. Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett

112. Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol

113. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

2019

113.1984 by George Orwell

114. Milkman by Anna Burns

115: The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing

116. All That Man Is by David Szalay

117. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

118. To the Back of Beyond by Peter Stamm

119.The Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton

120. Paradise by Toni Morrison

121. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Dec 4: Secret Santa book exchange / end-year party

2020

15 Jan: Book selection: Russian classics

Book 122: The Last Garden by Eva Hornung (presenter: Sean)

Feb 12: Book selection: Non-fiction books (presenter: Peter)

Book 122.1 (discussed before): The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (presenter: Félix)

March 11: Book selection: Latin America (presenter: Angela)

Book 123: The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coats (presenter: Peter)

April 15: Book selection: Pandemic themes (Angela, Nicole, Joan, Sean, Vlad)

Book 124: The Ship of Fools by Cristina Peri Rossi (presenter: Nicole)

May 20: Book selection: Southeast Asia (presenter: Uma)

Book 125: Grace by Paul Lynch (presenter: Sean)

June 17: Book selection: Classics (Sean, Vlad and Angela)

Book 126 : The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (presenter: UMA)

Aug 18: Book selection: the Travel Memoir

Book 127 : Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Sept 15: Book selection: The 1930s

Book 128 : Oct 6: book discussion: The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara

Oct 20: Book selection: Literary Science-Fiction

Book 129 : Nov 2: Perreira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi

Nov 17: Book selection: Turkish literature

Dec 1st: Secret Santa Book exchange

2021

Book 130: Jan 12/21 : Machines like Me by Ian McEwan

Jan 26 : Book selection: The Mountain

Book 131: The Time Regulation Institute by A.H. Tanpinar

Feb 23: Book selection: Central European Literature

March 9: Book 132: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby

March 23: Book Selection: German language literature

April 13: Book 133: The Door by Magda Szabo

April 27: Book 134: Donna Has Left The Building by Susan Jane Gillman

May 11: Book Selection: Persian literature

May 25: Book 135: Slow Homecoming by Peter Handke

June 8: Book selection: The Big Summer Read

June 22: Book 136 - The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

August 10: Book Selection : Women Nobel Prize Winners

August 24: Book 137- The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

September 7: Book Selection: Exile (in its various forms)

September 21: Book discussion- #138 - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

October 5: Book Selection: The Booker Prizes 2021

October 19- #139 - Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

November 9: Book Selection Chinese Literature

November 23: Book Discussion- #140- When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

December 7: Secret Santa Book Exchange

2022

January 11 2022: Book selection: Novels set in Geneva

January 25, 2022: Book #141 - Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan

Feb 8th: Book selection: Contemporary Korean Writing

Feb 22: Book #142 - Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad

March 8th: Book selection: Literature from Ukraine

March 22: Book #143 - No One Writes Back by Jang Eun-Jin

April 5: Book selection: The Birth of the Novel in 18c England

April 26: Book#144 - Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex by Oksana Zabuzhko

May 10: Book selection: Gender and Sexuality in Literature

May 24:Book #145 - Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

June 7: Book selection: The Big (summer) Read

Aug 30 :Book #146 - Sphinx by Anne Garréta

Sep 13: Book selection: On Memory

Sep 27: Book #147 - The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse

Oct 11: Book selection: The Evolution of the Spy novel

Nov 1: Book#148 - Missing Person by Patrick Modiano

Nov 15 Book Selection: Magic Realism

Nov 29: Book #149 - Star of the North by D.B.John

Dec 13: Secret Santa Book Exchange

2023

Jan 17: Book selection: Literature from West Africa

Jan 31: Book #150 - Hard-Boiled Wonderland (...) by H. Murakami

Feb14: Book selection: Dutch literature from the Netherlands

Feb 28: Book #151 - Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane

March 14: Book Selection- The SEA

March 28: Book #152 - The Evenings by Gerard Reve

May 2: Book Selection - Music & Musicians

May 16: Book #153 - The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima

May 30: Book Selection - Japanese Aestheticism

June 13: Book#154 - The Loser by Thomas Bernhard

June 27: Book Selection - The Big Summer Read

Sep 19: Book #155 - Rivalry: A Geisha’s Tale by Kafū Nagai

Oct 3: Book selection: Poets writing novels

Oct 17: Book #156 - Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

Oct 31: Book selection: Fitzcarraldo Editions Special

Nov 14: Book #157 - The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa 

Nov 28: Book Selection : Exophonica

Dec 12: Secret Santa Book Exchange

2024

Jan 16 : Book #158 - Companions by Christina Hesselholdt

Jan 30 : Book selection: The Murder Mystery

Feb 13: Book #159 - Life is Good by Alex Capus

Feb 27: Book selection: The Big Ban

March 12: Book #160 - The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Sōji Shimada

March 26: Book selection: Literature from Sri Lanka

April 16: Book #161 - The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare

April 30: Book selection: Immigrant literature in the US

May 14: Book #162 - Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

May 28: Book selection: Indian Literature

June 11: Book #163 - The End by Salvatore Scibona

June 25: Book selection: The Big (summer) Read

Sep 10: Book#164-The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore

Sep 24: Book selection: New trends in literature

Oct 8: Book #165 - Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu

Oct 29: Book Selection: Encountering the Other

Nov 12: Book #166 - One Hundred Twenty-One Days - Michèle Audin

Nov 26: Book Selection: Indigenous Literature of North America

Dec 10: Secret Santa Book Exchange

2025

Jan 21: Book #167 - Solaris by Stanisław Lem

Feb 4 : Book selection: Novels Set in a Day

Feb 18 : Book #168 - The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

Mar 4: Book Selection: Along the Silk Roads 

Mar 18: Book #169 - Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Apri 1: Book selection: The World of the English 19th c. Novel

April 15: Book #170 - Damascus Nights by Rafik Schami

May 6: Book Selection: Into the Trees

May 20 : Book #171- The Ambassadors by Henry James

June 3: Book Selection (Big Summer Read)

Sep 16: Book #172 - The Man Who Spoke Snakish - Andrus Kivirähk

Sep 30: Book selection: The Desert in Literature

Oct 14: Book #173 - The Art of Joy by Goliarda Sapienza

Oct 28: Book selection: Contemporary Irish Fiction

Nov 11: Book#174 - The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

Nov 25: Book Selection: Laugh-Out-Loud Best Sellers

Dec 9 : Secret Santa Book Exchange

2026

Jan 13: Book #175 - Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan

Jan 27: Book Selection : Climate Fiction

Feb 10: Book #176 - The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson