William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. London, Oxford Press.
Summary: Two crazy teenagers fall in love, but their families forbid the relationship, the two groups get into a brawl, a huge fight, many people get hurt. Then a priest has a stupid idea and both die after drinking poison, thinking it was a sleeping potion.
End
Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary. 778 pages.
Summary: A housewife cheats on her husband and sleeps with the baker, the milkman, the postman, the guy at the bar, the grocery store owner, and a wealthy neighbor. Then she falls into depression, poisons herself, and dies.
End
Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace. Paris, Ed. Chartreuse. 1200 pages.
Summary: A young man doesn't want to go to war because he is in love, and because of that, Napoleon invades Moscow. The girl marries someone else.
End.
Marcel Proust: La recherche du temps perdu. (In Search of Lost Time). Paris, Gallimard. 1922. 1600 pages.
Summary: An asthmatic young man suffers from insomnia because his mother doesn't give him a goodnight kiss. The next day (page 486, vol. I), he eats a cake and writes a book. That night (page 1344, vol. VI) he has an asthma attack because his girlfriend (or boyfriend?) refuses to give him a few kisses. Everything ends at a ball (vol. VII) where everyone is very old - and that's it.
End.
Luís de Camões: The Lusiads. Editora Lusitania.
Summary: A poet with insomnia decides to tell the king a story about sailors who, after some problems (soon solved by a super-nice goddess), have the best life on an island full of hot women.
End.
William Shakespeare: Hamlet. London, Oxford Press.
Summary: A prince with insomnia walks along the castle walls when his father's ghost tells him he was killed by the uncle who sleeps with his mother, whose trusted man is the father of his girlfriend, who meanwhile commits suicide upon learning that the prince killed her father to avenge the uncle who had killed the prince's father and slept with his mother. The prince kills the uncle who sleeps with his mother after talking to a skull and is murdered by the girlfriend's brother, the same one who was crazy and had committed suicide.
End.
Sophocles: “Oedipus Rex” - Greek tragedy. Various editions.
Summary: A crazy guy shows off, doesn't listen to what a blind man tells him, and ends up killing his father, sleeping with his mother, and gouging out his own eyes. Because of this, centuries later, psychoanalysis emerges, which, while showing you are on the same path, rips your eyes out in every session.
End.
William Shakespeare: Othello.
Summary: A foolish king, a total loser, has a very nasty friend who only thinks about making a fool of him. The so-called "friend" doesn't get a government position and decides to take revenge on the king, convincing him that the queen is sleeping with someone else. The fool believes it and kills the queen. Later he discovers he wasn't a cuckold, but just very stupid for having believed the traitor. He arrests the guy and cries alone.
End.
