When a philosopher like Alisa Zinovievna orients much of his literary career to fiction, we can be sure to enjoy stories loaded with symbolism. Only in the case of this author, sheltered behind the pseudonym of Ayn Rand, It is not immersed in the allegorical but starts from a cruder realism peppered with intense bursts of humanism.
In Rand's fiction bibliography we go through varied scenarios that at times point to the dystopian or that sink their roots into the existential, sown by that chronic consciousness of every thinker dedicated to the cause of proposing stories.
Not in vain this author is heir to the great Russian storytellers Chekhov, Dostoievski o Tolstoy, those springs of icy realism, of characters chiseled on the cold marble of survival.
However Ayn Rand began to publish her works already installed in the United States after his youth escape from Russia in which he forged his narrative imprint. And that determined the hybrid nature of his stories, with the evocation of his dark days in the Russia of the Bolshevik revolution.
A differentiating mark that, as I say, would lead years later in his novels and later purely philosophical essays. Parking that plot of theorizer, in which Ayn established new currents of thought, we focus on her figure as a novelist.
Top 3 Recommended Novels by Ayn Rand
The rebellion of Atlas
A novel that arises from weariness with communism, or rather from its authoritarian historical drift. From her knowledge of the methods of this type of regime, Ayn Rand magnetized American readers, and the rest of the world, with a very lively plot, very intense in its ominous approach.
With a background of the social evils of every political system, we see the desolate scenario of a great crisis in the United States. Goods begin to become scarce and survival becomes routine.
The old dilemma between state interventionism and economic liberalism places us in that difficult position of impossible balance when the foolishness of the political class makes the recovery of a society in decline even more impossible.
Because when the economy declines, you can see the worst of human beings. With the undoubted touch of a sociological thriller, the author introduces us to deep reflections. There are no saviors or magic recipes in the face of adversity, perhaps small heroes who light the way from transformative and exemplary attitudes.
The spring
The novel that catapulted an author who until now was walking in the shadows of every writer who yearns for the stroke of luck. The protagonist of this story by Howard Roark, an architect by profession. A suggestive metaphor for this guild as a city-building element. But in the face of costumbrismo and the inertia that prevails in all areas, Howard tries to be innovative, to contribute his most creative vision to revolutionize everything.
Seen as an ambitious but undoubtedly stubborn young man, Howard will have to insert himself as one more, ardent with color among the gray of conventions. Everything seems to conspire against his iron will to propose changes, from his fellow members to his closest circle and by extension the government itself, which narrows its action on the closed circles of the entire establishment.
From Howard, we advance in an approach that goes far beyond that action in search of the exit for the alienation that traps Howard. Because the ultimate goal of the narrative is to reveal that mismatch between the individual with the general. That assumption of habit as the good, under premises of fear of change.
Those who live
Perhaps an autobiographical novel with the intention of closing previous chapters. Since her arrival in the United States in the XNUMXs, it took a decade for the author to publish this debut.
Soaked in her new vital context and with the broad focus of time that has elapsed, the author unfolds herself into the characters of this story, inhabitants of the Soviet regime and aspirants to inconceivable quotas of freedom in that world marked in every corner by slogans that she knew well how to decipher George Orwell, especially in the allegorical fable "Animal Farm." On this occasion the writer did not mess around with allegories and she offers us a stark narrative about the impossible in the face of injustices made law.
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