For me, The Unbearable Lightness of Being-Milan Kundera; On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous-Ocean Vuong; Love in the Time of Cholera-Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The most tragic, painful, human suffering can be presented and these writers present it in the most excruciatingly beautiful prose.
On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous-“A woman stands on the shoulder of a dirt road begging, in a tongue made obsolete by gunfire, to enter the village where her house sits, has sat for decades. It is a human story. Anyone can tell it. Can you tell? Can you tell the rain has grown heavy, its keystrokes peppering the blue shawl black?”
What is the beauty for you?
This year it was Middlemarch by George Eliot and Banyan Moon by Thao Thai
The entire text of Cold Mountain could be carved into granite, it’s so perfect and beautiful.
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Anything by Toni Morrison or Robin Wall Kimmerer
I don’t really have a quote handy, but The God Of Small Things by Arundathi Roy had many moments just so evocative of India, Kerala in particular and the world is described so perfectly and wonderfully. The whole book is like this, it’s dense and reads like poetry the entire way through.
Cixin Liu- In Remembrance of Earth’s Past: Dark Forest
“Make time for civilization, for civilization won’t make time."
Caraval series by Stephanie Gatber. Also Sands of Arawiya Duology by Hafsah Faizal. Adored the sentences that looked like poetry
Lolita, 100 Hundred Years of Solitude and Moby Dick have some of the most transcendental prose ever put to page.
I can’t pick out specific passages right now, but I did this multiple times each with Madame Bovary and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Tudo é Rio, Carla Madeira.
This woman just writes a romance like endless poetry.
All of Le temps, ce grand sculpteur by Marguerite Yourcenar.
Chesterton has a lot of this. T.H. White in The Once and Future King. I had to take a break at the end of the boar hunt.
Ray Bradbury’s collection of short stories called The Illustrated Man is lovely as well, and not mentioned as often as his other works.
Kerouac On The Road, GGM 100 years of solitude, Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian
The poisonwood bible literally set the standard for me on beautiful writing.