What is the Hardest book?

Question

What is the hardest book in the english language? Whant to challenge my self.

Answer 1

just my opinion but...
Ulysses by James Joyce

Answer 2

The most difficult to read books originally written in the english language are generally accepted to be written by either Joyce (Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses) or Faulkner (go with The Sound and the Fury, if you ask me). These earn such distinction because of the style in which they were written and the complex overtones of their content.

Many of the suggestions here are difficult for casual readers, but nothing can replace the isolation and complexity of the modernist movement (of which both Joyce and Faulkner were a part). As a point of fact, Elliot was also a modernist, but the wasteland is a poem. Paradise Lost is an (epic) poem.

You may also consider entering into the world of "post-colonial" literature if you are looking to challenge your view of other parts of the world and what exactly defines "english literature." I'd recommend Salmon Rushdie to that end. Start with one of his most controversial - The Satanic Verses.

Answer 3

the hardest book I have ever looked at is Paradise Lost by John Milton. The only people I know who have read it did so with a guide book. It is harder than any Shakespeare books I have read and I had to have long discussions about the paragraphs with people to figure out what it means. but it is supposed to be amazing... and what I have figured out in it is so in depth and well written. It is as big as a book and reads like one but is actually an epic; a very long narrative poem.

this is just a paragraph of it...
Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes mix't
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage...

Answer 4

I think reading the trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) by Samuel Beckett is challenging, enigmatic and inspiring since he first wrote the three novels in French, then translated them into English (He's Irish and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969). According to Paul Aster, the editor of the hardcover four-volume set published as the Grove Centenary Edition by the Grove Press in New York, he ended his Editor's Note simply, "Open anywhere and begin reading. It is an experience unequal anywhere in the universe of words."

I think you can find the trilogy in a good library or buy Volume II: Novels (the three novels + How It Is) which costs US$24.00. The attached web site's for you to read about his works.

Answer 5

The first challenging book originally written in English that comes to mind is Moby Dick. Works that were translated into English that I found challenging are anything written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Alexandre Dumas. But they are all worth the challenge. I really enjoyed Moby Dick and The Three Musketeers.

Answer 6

James Joyce - Ulysses or Finnegan's wake are very tough reads. But the new Thomas Pinchon is no walk in the park. Pax - C

Answer 7

Well, that depends on what you find challenging. I don't believe that there is A PARTICULAR book that holds that distinction. "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot is considered very challenging due to its high modernistic qualities. "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann is challenging because it questions a lot of things in life. I could continue to list books for ages... perhaps if you gave me more ideas of what you're looking for, I could help you out.

Answer 8

Ulysses by James Joyce

Answer 9

"Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce - a book that makes even Ulysses look easy.

"Joyce's method of stream of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations were pushed to the limit in Finnegans Wake, which abandoned all conventions of plot and character construction and is written in a peculiar and obscure language, based mainly on complex multi-level puns. This approach is similar to, but far more extensive than, that used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky. If Ulysses is a day in the life of a city, then Wake is a night and partakes of the logic of dreams. This has led many readers and critics to apply Joyce's oft-quoted description in the Wake of Ulysses as his "usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles"[23] to the Wake itself. However, readers have been able to reach a consensus about the central cast of characters and general plot.
Much of the wordplay in the book stems from the use of multilingual puns which draw on a wide range of languages. The role played by Beckett and other assistants included collating words from these languages on cards for Joyce to use and, as Joyce's eyesight worsened, of writing the text from the author's dictation.[24]
The view of history propounded in this text is very strongly influenced by Giambattista Vico, and the metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola are important to the interplay of the "characters". Vico propounded a cyclical view of history, in which civilisation rose from chaos, passed through theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases, and then lapsed back into chaos. The most obvious example of the influence of Vico's cyclical theory of history is to be found in the opening and closing words of the book. Finnegans Wake opens with the words 'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.' ('vicus' is a pun on Vico) and ends 'A way a lone a last a loved a long the'. In other words, the book ends with the beginning of a sentence and begins with the end of the same sentence, turning the book into one great cycle. Indeed, Joyce said that the ideal reader of the Wake would suffer from "ideal insomnia"[25] and, on completing the book, would turn to page one and start again, and so on in an endless cycle of reading."


"From 1922 until 1939 Joyce worked on Finnegans Wake, the hardest book in the history of books to read. Finnegans Wake attempts to tell all of human history in a single night, with an Irish tint. That sentence doesn't do it nearly enough justice, but no one sentence ever could. Joyce died in Zurich in 1941 after an operation for a perforated ulcer."

Answer 10

English author - James Joyce
American - William Faulkner

Answer 11

I think "Paradise Lost" by John Milton and "Le Morte d' Arthur" by Sir Thomas Malory are both challenging!