Germinal

Émile Zola

Dans la plaine rase, sous la nuit sans étoiles, d’une obscurité et d’une épaisseur d’encre, un homme suivait seul la grande route de Marchiennes à Montsou, dix kilomètres de pavé coupant tout droit, à travers les champs de betteraves.[translation by Havelock Ellis, 1894] Over the open plain, beneath a starless sky as dark and thick as ink, a man walked alone along the highway from Marchiennes to Montsou, a straight paved road ten kilometers in length, intersecting the beetroot-fields.

A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry

The morning express bloated with passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched forward suddenly, as though to resume full speed.

Oscar and Lucinda

Peter Carey

If there was a bishop, my mother would have him to tea.

Buddenbrooks

Thomas Mann

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.

Skinny Legs and All

Tom Robbins

This is the room of the wolfmother wallpaper. The toadstool motel you once thought a mere folk tale, a corny, obsolete, rural invention.

The Wings of the Dove

Henry James

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face postiively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without the sight of him.

Cider with Rosie

Laurie Lee

I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.

Cranford

Elizabeth Gaskell

In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women.

Angle of Repose

Wallace Stegner

Now I believe they will leave me alone.