So this Book Break video has a really exciting
twist, because this time, you have the chance
to win every single book I'm about to mention.
I've got ten books here, gorgeous classics,
a mixture of these lovely blue and gold Macmillan
Collectors Library editions, and some amazing
Picador classics here as well.
So, stay tuned to the end of this video, and
I'll let you know how you can win all of these
books.
So, if you hadn't guessed from me just showing
you, today's video is going to be all about
classics.
But we were talking about how, with classics,
it's really easy to assume that there's only
one type of author who wrote these classics,
because often those are the ones that get
talked about the most, and get taught in schools
the most.
But actually, all kinds of different authors
have been writing amazing books for centuries.
So, in this video, I've got a selection of
ten classics here, written by a really diverse
range of authors.
And a lot of these authors had to struggle
against different forms of oppression in order
to get their voices heard.
And some of the voices are now really really
famous, some of them you will have read a
hundred times, and some of them, hopefully
there might be some here you hadn't heard
of before, so I add something to your reading
list.
But clear some space on your bookshelves,
because I've got ten books here, and you might
be going home with all ten of them.
Oh, and if you want to know where I am today,
what this amazing bookish backdrop is, I will
link everything in the description box below,
so you can check out how you can visit the
Fable bar and sit in this amazing table for
book-lovers.
So starting with a really beloved classic,
I've got Orlando by Virginia Woolf, which
is an exploration of the fluidity of gender
and sexuality.
Which in its own time, and to be honest, still
now, was completely revolutionary.
So Virginia Woolf was herself bisexual, and
she modelled the character Orlando on her
lover Vita Sackville-West, who was another
really interesting woman who completely defied
all of the gender stereotypes of her day.
And because of the way that she inspired Orlando,
Vita Sackville-West's son called Orlando the
'longest and most charming love letter in
literature'.
And Virginia Woolf also struggled with mental
health problems, and tragically in the end
took her own life by drowning.
And her legacy today is completely amazing.
She's still considered one of the greatest
feminist writers, and her writing about both
mental health and bisexuality have really
helped to lessen the stigma against both of
them.
And while we're on the topic of amazing women,
I've got a book here by Fran Ross.
This is Oreo, which is a satire about a mixed
race girl on a quest to find out about her
white father.
And it's kind of a retelling of the myth of
Theseus, and kind of the Odyssey, but without
any of the neat wrapping ups of the ending.
Both because of the content and the style,
this is a novel that was so far ahead of its
time, that when it was published back in the
70s, it was pretty much ignored, but now is
definitely the time to read this one.
Now, The Prophet by Khalil Gibran is one of
the most translated books in history.
It's been translated into over 100 languages.
It was originally written in English by the
Lebanese-American author Khalil Gibran.
It's a collection of poetry prose fables,
that are really beloved now, but for a long
time were ignored by the literary establishment
in the West, and really unfairly dismissed
as not having substance.
But actually, it's this rather amazing, non-traditional,
non-judgemental spiritual guide, that breaks
away from the Orthodox religions to offer
something much more accessible to everyone.
Now for a book that hasn't been ignored, and
thank goodness, because it's brilliant, The
Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.
So this is a very funny farcical play about
two friends, both impersonating a fictional
character called Ernest.
And it's completely ridiculous and wonderful.
But Oscar Wilde, despite his success, spent
two years in prison for gross indecency.
He was imprisoned simply for being gay and
having relationships with men.
And he suffered terrible public persecution,
and his time in prison had really dangerous
effects on his health.
But despite all of that, while in prison,
Oscar Wilde wrote this really powerful letter,
all about not regretting or denying who he
was.
OK, so now we're going way further back in
time, to a book that was first published in
1355, The Travels of Ibn Battutah.
So Ibn Battutah was a Moroccan Muslim man,
who was just 21 when he set off to explore
the world.
Like so many of us do, but whereas I spent
about a month drinking cheap vodka in different
seedy bars across Europe, and then ran out
of Euros and came home, he didn't come home
for another 29 years.
In that time, he visited over 40 countries,
from China to Russia to Tanzania, and he wrote
about all of his journeys in here.
So this book is a travel book, a history book,
an autobiography, and he writes about everything
from the culture, to the scenery, to even
the food of the different places that he visited.
So it's a completely amazing journey.
Now a novelist who used his work to write
about his own disability was Fyodor Dostoevsky,
who suffered from epilepsy.
And you will find characters with epilepsy
throughout his writing, and all written in
a way to deliberately avoid the cliches of
the time, but instead to actually portray
the reality of the condition as Dostoevsky
experienced it.
And his most famous novel is of course Crime
and Punishment, which is about the moral anguish
of an ex-student who formulates a plan to
kill a pawnbroker for her money.
Now for a perspective that we definitely don't
see represented very often, I'm turning to
Shusaku Endo, who wrote from the perspective
of being a Japanese Roman Catholic.
So he wrote the novel Silence, which is a
historical fiction novel about a Portuguese
Jesuit missionary, sent to 17th century Japan,
where Christians were being really severely
persecuted.
So this is a really powerful book, that's
been turned into a film three times, once
by a Japanese director, once by a Portuguese
director, and once by the American Martin
Scorcese.
Now something I never knew before about a
very famous author, Alexandre Dumas, is that
he was mixed-race, and that his father was
actually born into slavery, the child of a
Black slave Marie-Cesette Dumas, and her French
nobleman master.
So as an adult, Alexandre Dumas adopted his
grandmother's surname, instead of continuing
to use his white slave-owning grandfather's
name.
And he did face a lot of racism in his time,
even while he was very successful, with critics
using racist caricatures to make fun of him,
and his fellow novelists using his race to
dismiss him.
But despite that, The Three Musketeers has
gone on to become the beloved novel it is
today.
It's a brilliant historical adventure novel,
with four swashbuckling heroes living in 17th
century France.
There's plenty of romance and plenty of duels.
One of my favourites of the Picador classics
is Trumpet by the Scottish author Jackie Kay.
So this is about a fictional famous Black
jazz musician Joss Moody, who has died shortly
before the novel starts, and is discovered
after his death to have been transgender,
which was known to nobody except his wife.
So his son feels particularly betrayed by
this secret having been kept, and in anger,
outs his father to a journalist.
So suddenly, his father's identity becomes
incredibly public, and is in the hands of
people who want to dissect it, without caring
or considering who Joss Moody really was,
and who he saw himself as.
And so the book is about really exploring
that relationship between the father and son
in retrospect, which had already been very
complicated even before this.
They had also navigated very different experiences
of their own racial identities for example.
So the book is about race, it's about gender,
it's about public versus private, and performance.
It's about identity, and it's about love.
And finally, The Stranger's Child by Alan
Hollinghurst, is a book that spans a whole
century of a family myth.
So it starts in the summer of 1913, when George
Saul brings his Cambridge friend Cecil home.
And Cecil is this handsome young aristocratic
poet, who both George and his younger Daphne
are completely enthralled by.
And while he's staying with them, Cecil writes
a poem, that both George and Daphne is about
them.
After Cecil is killed in the war, the poem
then becomes famous, and so we then follow
the next few decades, touching in on a few
different time periods, the fame of the poem,
and Cecil's changing reputation as a poet.
Until we meet a biographer who is determined
to go back and unearth the secrets from that
first summer.
So how do you win all ten of these amazing
books?
All you have to do is leave a comment below
featuring a book emoji.
And the competition will be open until 4pm
on the 12th September, so you've got exactly
two weeks to get commenting.
The full terms and conditions are linked in
the description box below if you want to check
them out, and the winner will be chosen by
random prize draw, so good luck!
And in the mean time, do give this video a
thumbs up, and leave a comment if you have
any diverse classics of your own that you'd
like to recommend.
And of course do hit that subscribe button
below, because we post new videos every Thursday,
and coming up next week, we're going to be
talking about feminist dystopia books, that
very popular genre.
And if you want to go behind the scenes of
Book Break, do go and follow us over on Instagram
@bookbreakuk.
See you next time.
