As I found out after reading, this is one of the most famous and most widely-read novels of the first Australian recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Although critically acclaimed abroad it wasn't much of a success in Australia when it first came out in 1955.

It's the slow-paced life story of a good though rather taciturn farmer and his family in the stunning nature of New South Wales in the first half of the twentieth century. Things change all around, the children go their own ways and relations between husband and wife are characterised by affection and habit.

For more be invited to click here and read my long review on my book blog Edith's Miscellany or its duplicate on Read the Nobels!

So here's a classical novel dealing with a very serious topic. This time it's breast cancer. Its author is the Nobel laureate in Literature of 1926 who suffered from breast cancer herself. She died in 1936, the same year when the novel was published.

However, The Church of Solitude isn't just the author's attempt to cope with her own fate. Far from it! Like all this writer's novels it offers a very interesting as well as first-rate portrait of rural life on Sardinia, Italy, during the 1930s. Moreover, its plot surrounding a female protagonist who suffers from breast cancer and who longs for nothing but peace and quiet so she tries her best to keep at bay her suitors is touching as well as gripping. I enjoyed the read and hope that the novel will be to your taste too!

If you'd like to know about this novel by Italian Nobel laureate, please click here to read my review on my main book blog Edith's Miscellany or you can find its duplicate here  Read the Nobels.

In the USA the word "Babbitt" has become synonymous for Philistine, thus for "a self-satisfied person who conforms readily to conventional, middle-class ideas and ideals, especially of business and material success" (babbitt. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/babbitt [accessed: April 22, 2015]). But how many of those who use the word know that it's actually the title of a novel and the name of its protagonist?

Babbitt was first published in 1922 and without doubt it must be called an important classic of American literature. Its author was Sinclair Lewis who would eight years later, in 1930, be the first US American recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. And yet, I'm led to believe that these days the novel isn't widely read anymore, if not forgotten by the great majority. What better reason to take it from my shelf and give it more than just a quick glance to see what it has to offer to a reader in the twenty-first century.

In fact, Babbitt is a novel that seems to me very up-to-date. It touches on many issues of our modern world, e.g. on the unhealthy craving for constant progress and growth, on globalisation = standardisation = uniformity, on the meaninglessness of life, on conformity and exclusion, on mid-life crises, on escape through entertainment,... I reviewed the novel at length on my other book blog – just click here to read what I wrote about it on Edith's Miscellany.

I love the work of Nobel laureate José Saramago and have already read a few of his books, not this one, though - his very first novel published posthumously because the editor to whom the author sent it didn't even bother to answer until decades later when Saramago won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Find out more in the great review that went online here on the Read the Nobels blog past week!

Here's a recent review from Read the Nobels about a novel titled The Harafish. It's an interesting book from the pen of Naguib Mahfouz, the so far only Egyptian recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's also Guiltless Reader's first contribution to the annual event Read the Nobels 2016, which is still open for sign-up, by the way.

»»» read also my review of Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz.