A set of 3 books: 'The Magus,' 'Never Let Me Go,' and 'Fahrenheit 451'

'The Magus'

John Fowles is one of the most outstanding and popular British writers, a modern classic, and the author of 'The Collector' and 'The French Lieutenant's Woman.'

'The Magus' serves as Fowles's signature novel. In this novel, on a lost Greek island, a mysterious 'magician' conducts merciless psychological experiments on people, subjecting them to the torture of passion and nothingness. The book combines the realistic tradition with elements of mysticism and detective fiction. Erotic scenes are perhaps the best written about carnal love in the second half of the 20th century.

Never Let Me Go

is a poignant book that is rightfully included in the list of the 100 best English novels of all time. Its author is a native Japanese, a graduate of the Malcolm Bradbury Literary Seminar and winner of the Booker Prize for his novel The Remains of the Day.

Thirty-year-old Katie recalls her childhood at the privileged Hailsham School, full of strange omissions, half-revelations and an underlying threat. This is a novel-parable. It is a story of love, friendship and memory. It is the ultimate embodiment of the metaphor 'to serve with one's whole life.'

It is also a novel-parable about the present and the past, causing spiritual turmoil and pain. Pain that will heal, but will stay with you long after reading.

Adapted into a film in 2010.

'Fahrenheit 451'

Ray Bradbury's philosophical dystopia paints a bleak picture of the development of post-industrial society. The novel brought its author worldwide fame.

Bradbury's statement in 2007 that 'Fahrenheit 451' was misunderstood was sensational. This book isn't about government censorship; it's about how television is ruining the bookstore experience.

In the early 1950s, most Americans had never seen a television, yet Bradbury predicted a new era of freedom, prosperity, and entertainment, when the desire for happiness, coupled with political correctness, would lead to the banning of books.

'Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it... White people don't like Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn that, too. Someone wrote a book about how smoking causes lung cancer. The tobacco industry is panicking. Burn that book.

...a book is a loaded gun in your neighbor's house. Burn it! Unload the gun!'