I loved Demon Copperhead, which I’ve heard is a re-telling of David Copperfield.
I want to read more re-tellings or classics… but from searching discussions, I see people mention that classic books often take detours in the form of the author’s personal commentary (often social or political) as thoughts or essays that otherwise have nothing to do with the rest of the book because such commentary wasn’t widely available outside of books in the times they were written in.
Some examples I’ve seen cited are the agrarian and political sides of Levin’s story in Anna Karenina and whaling industry knowledge in Moby Dick.
Plus, it feels many classics have language that’s archaic or very tiring to read. I recently came across The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights and decided to check out the preview of Richard Burton’s book, figuring a book with interesting short stories would be a fun and breezy break in-between heavier works… and wow, was I wrong. The Amazon preview is way too heavy for me to read with any semblance of flow.
At the same time, I’ve heard abridged versions of Arabian Nights are heavily censored. Similarly, I worry most abridged versions of classics may lose the depth in characters and interactions.
I’m uninterested in political commentary and lack the historical context to appreciate it in classics. But I do like character depth and insights into people’s interactions with each other. **Some books I’ve loved were Flowers for Algernon, Never Let Me Go, Demon Copperhead, Ender’s Game and The House of the Scorpion.**
What abridged versions of classics or re-tellings would you recommend checking out for someone like me?
by sib43
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You may like books by Octavia E. Butler. She mostly wrote sci fi, and I find her characters impressively well written.
Elizabeth Cook’s “Achilles” is a beautiful novella that covers the Fall of Troy in a beautiful, elegant way that’s faithful to many of the themes and characterization of the Epic Cycle. Then it shifts to a Keats chapter, to address the role of retellings and translations in the literary world (Keats loved Homer, but couldn’t read Ancient Greek).
I have no idea how it packs so much into so few pages.
_Fool_ by Christopher Moore is a bawdy retelling/parody of Shakespeare’s King Lear, from the point of view of Lear’s fool. It is also possibly the funniest book I have ever read.