Top Results for Picaresque

The Saragossa Manuscript is a 1965 Polish film adapting Jan Potocki’s 1815 novel. The story unfolds in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, centering on a manuscript detailing the adventures of Alphonso van Worden. Van Worden's travels involve encounters with diverse figures and interwoven narratives w...

Vladimir Nabokov’s *Lolita* is a complex and widely discussed novel exploring the dangerous infatuation of middle-aged lawyer Humbert Humbert for Dolores Haze, a sixteen-year-old girl. Published in 1955, it remains notable for its stylistic brilliance and unsettling narrative voice. The story delves...

The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man is an unfinished picaresque novel by German author Thomas Mann, published in 1954. It satirizes European society through the first-person narrative of Felix Krull, a charming and adaptable confidence man who rises by deception and self-invention. The no...

A Walk on the Wild Side is a 1956 novel by American writer Nelson Algren. Its picaresque narrative follows Dove Linkhorn, a young drifter who travels through the American South and reaches Depression-era New Orleans, where he encounters people living on the margins of conventional society. The novel...

Dodes’ka-den is a 1970 Japanese drama film by Akira Kurosawa. It portrays a collection of marginalized individuals living on the outskirts of Tokyo struggling with poverty and isolation. The film explores themes of existentialism, melancholy, and human connection through a narrative that blends real...

Kim is a novel by Rudyard Kipling, first published in book form in 1901 and set in British-ruled India. It follows Kimball O'Hara, an orphan who travels with a Tibetan lama while also becoming involved in British intelligence work connected with the Great Game rivalry in Central Asia. Combining pica...

*Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl* is a picaresque novel written by Andrea Lawlor and published in 2017. Set in the early 1990s, the narrative follows Paul Polydoris, a gay shapeshifter who possesses the ability to alter his physical body and gender at will. As Paul travels through iconic Americ...

A Voice Through a Cloud is a semi-autobiographical novel by British writer Denton Welch, published posthumously in 1950. It draws heavily on Welch's own experiences following a serious bicycle accident he sustained as a young man, which left him with long-term disabilities. The novel was left nearly...

Valencia is a 2000 autobiographical novel by American writer Michelle Tea. Set in San Francisco, it follows a young queer woman through a subculture shaped by nightlife, friendship, sex, drugs, and unstable relationships, using a direct first-person narrative rather than a conventional linear coming...

The Wondrous Bird's Nest is a German picaresque novel by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen. Published in two parts in the 1670s, it forms the concluding work of the Simplician Cycle, the sequence of novels associated with The Adventurous Simplicissimus. The story uses a magical bird's nest t...

The Adventures of Wesley Jackson is a 1946 American novel by William Saroyan, published by Harcourt, Brace and Company. It follows Wesley Jackson through military life during World War II and presents a critical, pacifist perspective on war and Army service rather than the straightforward heroic nar...

Employing an animal protagonist, this picaresque novel follows the titular ape's episodic adventures, using satirical fable conventions to mock human society and its follies.