10 Novels That Forced Me To Love Prose Fiction

Prose fiction is my weakness, I can't resist reading fiction, as it takes me to another world, books on politics, philosophy, theories, social science could be boring, but fiction is always entertaining. However, I never touch poetry, though poetry has its own charms but it has never attracted me, on the other hand prose fiction attracts me because it offers wider range of topics, scene situations and characters, there are certain characters that I have lived with for a longer part of my life, those characters have directly effected my thought process and those characters forced me to tell stories.

Here is list of ten novels that forced me to love prose fiction:

1- The Stranger By Albert Camus: It is often translated as 'The Outsider' is the masterpiece of French Noble laureate Albert Camus. It is the story of a man Meursault, an indifferent French Algerian described as "a citizen of France domiciled in North Africa, a man of the Mediterranean. He attends his mother's funeral. A few days later, he kills an Arab man in French Algiers, who was involved in a conflict with a friend. Meursault is tried and sentenced to death.

 The story is divided into two parts, presenting Meursault's first-person narrative view before and after the murder, respectively. It was published in 1942, and is regarded as a modern day classic. Its theme and outlook are often quoted as examples of Camus's philosophy of the absurd and existentialism.

2- 1984 By George Orwell: 1984 is a dystopian novel and its themes centre on the risks of government overreach, totalitarianism and repressive regimentation of all persons and behaviors within society. 

The novel is set in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism and propaganda. It was published in 1949, and has been translated into many languages.

3- Kafka On The Shore By Haruki MuraKami: This splendid novel by Japanese novelist Murakami is story of a fifteen year old boy Kafka, who is cursed by his father that he would bring disgrace to the family, the boy leaves his home in search of his mother and sister. The novel deals with magical realism, suspense, humor, an involved plot, and potent sexuality. This novel was published in 2002, and was translated into English in 2005.

4- Disgrace By J M Coetzee: This Booker Prize Winner novel is story of David Lurie  a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching a class in romantic literature at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. 

Lurie's sexual activities are all inherently risky. Before the sexual affair that will ruin him, he becomes attached to a prostitute and attempts to have a romantic relationship with her (despite her having a family), which she rebuffs. He then seduces a secretary at his university, only to completely ignore her afterwards. His "disgrace" comes when he seduces one of his more vulnerable students, a girl named Melanie Isaacs, plying her with alcohol and other actions that arguably amount to rape. This novel was publsihed in 1999, while Coetzee got Nobel Prize for literature in 2003.

5- Nausea By Jean Paul Sartre: Nausea is a philosophical novel by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, published in 1938. It is Sartre's first novel and, in his own opinion, one of his best works. 

It  is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him. It was first published in 1938 and has been translated into many languages.

6- My Name is Red By Orhan Pamuk: The main characters in the novel are miniaturists in the Ottoman Empire, one of whom is murdered in the first chapter. From this point, Pamuk—in a postmodern style reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges—plays with the reader and with literary conventions. The novel incorporates metafiction in such ways as making frequent reference to the reader and to the narrators' awareness that they are characters in a book.

Each chapter of the novel has a different narrator, and usually there are thematic and chronological connections between chapters. In addition, unexpected voices are used, such as the corpse of the murdered, a coin, Satan, two dervishes, and the color red. Each of these "unusual" narrators is contributed by specific characters, who detail the philosophical system of 16th century Istanbul. The novel blends mystery, romance, and philosophical puzzles, illustrating the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murat III during nine snowy winter days in 1591. This novel was published in Turkish in 1998, its English translation came out in 2001, while it has been translated into 60 major languages of the world. In 2006, Pamuk became Nobel laureate.

7- Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart is a novel written by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. the story gives account of pre-colonial life in the south-eastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of the Europeans during the late nineteenth century.
 It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, one of the first to receive global critical acclaim. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and is widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world. I was forced to love Africa after reading this novel, it was published in 1958.

8- Requiem for A Woman's Soul By Omar Rivabella: This is a dystopian novel that is a ride to read. In a town in an unnamed Latin American country, a Catholic priest--racked by moral doubt regarding the Church's social role--discovers the torn papers of a diary belonging to a woman arrested and brutally tortured for no apparent reason. It was published in 1986, and has been translated into 20 major languages.

9- The Davanci Code By Dan Brown: This is the second mystery thriller adventure of Robert Langden, a symbologist. It follows Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris causes them to become involved in a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ having been a companion to Mary Magdalene.

The novel explores an alternative religious history, whose central plot point is that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, ideas derived from Clive Prince's The Templar Revelation (1997) and books by Margaret Starbird. The book also refers to The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) though Dan Brown has stated that it was not used as research material.

The Da Vinci Code provoked a popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and Mary Magdalene's role in the history of Christianity. The book has, however, been extensively denounced by many Christian denominations as an attack on the Catholic Church, and consistently criticized for its historical and scientific inaccuracies. The novel nonetheless became a worldwide bestseller that sold 80 million copies as of 2009. It was published in 2003.

10- Midnight's Children By Salman Rushdie: It deals with India's transition from British colonialism to independence and the partition of British India. It is considered an example of postcolonial, postmodern, and magical realist literature.

The story is told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, and is set in the context of actual historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive. Midnight's Children won both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981. 
The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India became an independent country. He was born with telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. The novel is divided into three books. It was published in 1981.