Enigmatic novels

I love novels with a mysterious, enigmatic quality such as The Magus by John Fowles, The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco or Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco. Does anyone have any recommendations with a similar style?

Damian

You might like Italo Calvino. My favorite of his is If on a Winter's Night a Traveller.

I do like Calvino. In fact his book The Castle of Crossed Destinies reminded me quite a bit of Baricco's Ocean Sea.

Jose Saramago's "All the Names" is definitely enigmatic. It's about a recording clerk for birth and death certificates in a very mysterious bureaucracy.

Surely, One Hundred Years of Solitude leaps to mind, and anything by Kafka, who is both enigmatic and a bit depressing.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my favourite books. I hadn't really thought about it this way but I suppose I am thinking about magical realism at the more subtle end of the scale.

dampok1, i don't know any of the books u mentioned, but earlier this year, i finished The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk, certainly very enigmatic -- it's a story told by a lawyer about his wife who suddenly disappears. The writing style can be quite difficult to follow (Pamuk won the Nobel in 2006), but after some time one gets the hang of it.

An Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin is interestingly enigmatic in the sense that it purports to be the "history" of a music art form that was eradicated by a season of great purges by the Catholic Church. The book provides information on a secret society, photographs of funerary violin scholars and of historic documentation to support his story. Only thing is, there was never such a thing as funerary art violin nor any purges of the alleged art form by the Catholic Church. The whole piece of work is sort of a literary/academic joke, but an entertaining one.

Anything by Paul Auster, but especially Oracle Night and the Book of Illusions. It gets weirder with every page you turn!

#2
One of my favorite books!!! :))
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What about:

Mysteries by Knut Hamsun?
or
War with the newts by Karel Capec
or
Animal Farm by George Orwell?

Something wrong with the Mysteries' touchstone.............

Why Asimov??

yOU SHOULD NOT MISS Jorge Luis Borges. Try ""Fictions" or "The Aleph". You may also try "2666" by Roberto Bolaño (not published yet) but be aware that it is some 1,100 pages.

Just finished The Book of Illusions. What a page turner! Very strange indeed. Very enigmatic indeed.

This is my kind of thread. I've read & loved a number of these. A couple of fairly recent reads:

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter
The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter

and of course love in the time of chorera.

as well as all the eco books, name of the rose.

one of my all time favorites, the story of pi i believe would come into this category.

captain corelli's mandolin was good, though the movie was not.

i also love this type of book.

The Silmarillion made me think about my life and how sometimes I can freak out about things that really are not that serious.

I started this thread ages ago and then forgot all about it. Now I have a wonderful list of books to check out. Thanks everyone. Many of these sound fascinating.

I'd also like to add W.G.Sebald's Rings of Saturn to the list. It really blurs the distincton between reality and fiction.

Damian

Calvino was my favorite, I fell for him after "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller". But my weirdest moment was reading Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" my freshman year of college. I was not ready for that. And maybe some day I'll steel my will and go back into it. Kudos for those that do.

I had a boyfriend, an aspiring novelist, who was really into Pynchon. He gave me Gravity's Rainbow to read. I could not finish it. Just could not. The rockets go up; the rockets go down—alright, I got it already!

I like the idea of Pynchon but not the reality. When I hear people rave about Gravity's Rainbow it sounds wonderful, just my cup of tea. I've tried it a couple of times but not been able to get past the first 100 pages. Maybe it gets better later on.

Anyone read David Foster Wallace? I'm tempted to give him a try.

Damian

I read Wallace, a short story of his "A Girl With Curious Hair." Characters are interesting, especially the main one. But can also get really uncomfortable for some readers, gets pretty dark.

Anything by Gene Wolfe will leave you scratching your head.

And not necessarily in a good way.

I find most of Wolfe deeply rewarding. I would say his best are all of the Sun books, plus a lot of the short stories and novellas. Next level includes Castleview, Sorcerer's House, Fifth Head, and Pandora; Peace, Free Live Free, There Are Doors, Pirate Freedom, and the Soldier books are OK but less good; I do not care for Operation Ares or The Wizard Knight. I haven't read An Evil Guest.