Welcome to the 3 Books To Know series, our idea is to help readers learn about fascinating topics through three essential and relevant books. These carefully selected works can be fiction, non-fiction, historical documents or even biographies. We will always select for you three great works to instigate your mind, this time the topic is: Anti-heroes Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert The Luck of Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published as a serial in Fraser's Magazine in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Stanley Kubrick adapted the novel into the film Barry Lyndon, released in 1975. Unlike the film, the novel is narrated by Barry himself, who functions as a quintessentially unreliable narrator. Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petesburg who formulates a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Before the killing, Raskolnikov believes that with the money he could liberate himself from poverty and go on to perform great deeds. However, once it is done he finds himself racked with confusion, paranoia, and disgust for what he has done. His moral justifications disintegrate completely as he struggles with guilt and horror and confronts the real-world consequences of his deed. Long established as one of the greatest novels, Madame Bovary has been described as a "perfect" work of fiction. Henry James wrote: "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone: it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment." The realist movement was, in part, a reaction against romanticism. Emma may be said to be the embodiment of a romantic: in her mental and emotional process, she has no relation to the realities of her world. This is one of many books in the series 3 Books To Know. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the topics