100 works that shaped literature

The books behind everything you read, watch and think.

Nea Lex is a doorway into the hundred works that shaped world literature — from Homer to Murakami. We summarise them, interpret them, and open up what they’re really saying. You can meet a whole work in an evening. In twelve languages. Free for individuals.

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Six of a hundred

Short, sharp and a good place to begin.

Out of the hundred, we’ve picked six short works that are easy to meet the first time. Good ways in.

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway· 1952

Meet the work in 20 minutes. An old fisherman. A huge fish. Three days alone at sea. Few books are this short and this large at the same time. Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for it. We’ll show you why.

The Stranger

Albert Camus· 1942

Meet the work in 25 minutes. “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” That opening line has been unsettling readers for eighty years. We’ll show you why it’s so provocative — and what Camus actually wants you to see.

The Outsiders

S.E. Hinton· 1967

Meet the work in 25 minutes. Hinton was 15 when she wrote it. It’s about kids who don’t fit in, about class, about what loyalty costs. It pretty much invented the modern young-adult novel.

The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka· 1915

Meet the work in 15 minutes. One morning Gregor wakes up as a giant insect. Most people know the image. Few know what Kafka is actually saying with it. That’s where we start.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Leo Tolstoy· 1886

Meet the work in 20 minutes. A successful judge gets sick and dies. That’s the whole plot. But along the way Tolstoy asks the questions everyone eventually asks themselves. We walk through them with you.